I remember her waltzing across the living room
singing, Somewhere my love, dah dah dah, dah,
dah dah. She was dancing alone, as she often did,
but oh, could she waltz, small feet like wings, her thin
body gliding past tables and chairs, weaving, spinning,
her arms lifted up in the air around a loving partner
who had never been there. I don’t think
she knew the rest of the words, or at least
she didn’t sing them. Always Somewhere
my love, again and again, like a promise
she wanted to believe in. She danced
like that through my childhood. Perhaps
dancing itself was her love. I can see her now
box stepping, one, two, three, one two three,
each step a step closer to all she did not have.
Posts Tagged ‘aloneness’
Remembering Rose
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged aloneness, dancing, grandmother, music on December 17, 2025| 8 Comments »
With the Stones of Our Stories
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged ache, aloneness, connection, stone on October 1, 2025| 8 Comments »
Every day a new atrocity.
Every day, the heart finds
a new way to ache.
Every day, our most scared
selves try to build a stone wall
around the heart, as if
to keep the ache away.
Every day our most sacred
selves dismantle the wall,
and use the same stones
to build bridges so we
might meet another
and hold them as they ache,
so the other might hold us, too.
Letter to the Others in the Dark
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged aloneness, darkness, fear, maturity, writing on January 7, 2025| 21 Comments »
I am writing not to send you light,
but to let you know you are not alone
in the darkness. I am here, too,
scribbling with no sight, no certainty
that the words on the page are legible,
no confidence you will receive this.
Still this impulse to reach out,
this longing to honor this deepening darkness,
though it is confusing, disorienting.
I find myself reminding myself
such darkness is natural, essential even,
and there is some comfort
in knowing this, in trusting I am part
of some great process, even though
it terrifies me. This is how the world
has been made and remade.
Of course we are no different
than stars. Perhaps you are not frightened.
But I am. Maybe this is why I reach out.
Because it takes so much courage
to trust the dark place, to attend to its demands,
to believe this is not the end, but a pause,
a stage between one world and another.
Please, don’t send me light either.
I don’t think I am ready yet, the pain still sharp,
not yet softened, not yet become wings,
though part of me longs to have already
arrived on the other side of transformation.
Perhaps you are reaching for me, too.
Perhaps you have already written
on this page, and because it is dark,
I can’t read what you’ve said.
Perhaps believing this makes me less alone.
And this is why I write.
Recess, Second Grade
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged aloneness, childhood, grass, inner child, nature on April 28, 2024| 13 Comments »
Past the blacktop, past the swings
a girl has wandered into tall grass,
dry and golden and high, and look
how she tucks in beneath the seed heads
and makes in the stems a nest,
lies on her back and looks up at the sky.
She can hear the screams and squeals
of other children as they play.
But here she is daughter of silence,
fallen angel of sunshine. There are wings
inside her breath. What does she know
that I have forgotten? What does she
love that I now squint to see?
Where does she still live in this woman,
this wanderling who was me?
Kalsarikännit
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged aloneness, drinking, Finnish, wine, words on August 28, 2022| 10 Comments »
Finnish: The feeling when you are going to get drunk home alone in your underwear—with no intention of going out. (pronounced CAHL-sahr-ree-CAN-neet)
Let’s say a woman worked in the garden all day
pulling up old kale and bolted chard and harvesting
potatoes and garlic and onions, and let’s say
her whole evening plan is to stay home
and shower and not get dressed,
and sip on a glass of wine, or whiskey
until she is sweetly light-headed,
well, wouldn’t it be lovely if there were a word
to describe her aspirations? A word
she could write in her calendar to be sure
no other loud plans swooped in. A word
she could say if her friends called and asked
what was happening tonight. And if
no one should call, she could say it to herself
for the joy of saying it—Kalsarikännit—
as she toasted the air, clinking her glass
against all that isn’t there.
And the wind on her skin, so brisk.
And the wine, so heady, so dry.
After the Memorial
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged aloneness, grief, loss, memorial, mother, nature, pause on August 7, 2022| 7 Comments »
The mother walked
in a deep river gorge
forged by water and time.
She knew herself alone.
She moved with no urgency.
She stepped as if she’d forgotten
what time was.
She paused at the wild currants
and pulled the small red fruits
into her mouth.
She paused on the bridge
and watched the water
continue its forging.
She paused on a flat rock,
removed her shoes
and slipped her feet
into the cold water.
She did not mind
the hem of her black dress
spilling into the stream.
She sat.
She didn’t weep until she did.
She wept until she didn’t.
She sat until she forgot
she was sitting.
She sat until
there was a clearing in her
the way the river will eventually clear
after it’s been muddied by the rain.
There’s no magic number
for how many minutes
or hours or years
it takes to clear.
It is, perhaps, sufficient to know
clearing happens.
At some point, she rose
and walked toward home.
She was not alone.
There was nothing that was not beautiful.
In Orbit
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged aloneness, earth, prayer, space, violence on March 26, 2021| 6 Comments »
Count the one beautiful blue and green planet.
Count it again.
Say “home,” then marvel at the taste of tears.
Notice how no borders matter from here.
Remember how important they feel
when standing on a border. Once
you dreamt of being alone. Of being
far away from parking lots and grocery store lines
and men with guns and violent conviction.
Now you dream of touching someone else,
of breathing in the scent of garden dirt,
of hearing a voice without static, of lying down
in a bed, held by your own sweet gravity.
What you would do to taste a tree-ripened peach.
Give up on counting stars. Draw lines between them,
creating your own constellations:
The open hand. The river gorge. The crooked evergreen.
A semi-automatic rifle, which you re-constellate
into a small bouquet of lilies. Consider forgiveness.
Wonder how long it will take before it feels authentic.
Circling has taught you how things come around.
Remember? There was a time you didn’t think
you knew how to pray.
In Room 224
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged aloneness, parenting, poem, poetry on February 19, 2017| 2 Comments »
My daughter is still asleep
after stealing the sheets
all night. I finally let her
have them all and I’ve risen
to watch the snow not fall
outside the window.
It is gray, and from where
I sit on the floor, I’m not sure
if it’s gray because it’s too early
for sun or because it’s cloudy.
I don’t want to move
or make a sound—
would rather not wake
my daughter. They are rare,
these moments alone.
A truck rattles by outside.
I notice I am noticing the truck.
That’s a lot of noticing
for something so insignificant,
I think to myself,
then I’m startled by a laugh,
a full belly laugh, in the bed
beside me. My daughter, dreaming,
can’t stop giggling.
God, I think, it’s great
to have a body,
and on this cold, gray morning,
gratitude finds me and
body slams me
with my wild luck,
pins me with joy
to be this very woman
on the floor in room 224
not at all alone.
Letter to a Far Away Friend
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged aloneness, friendship, loneliness, poem, poetry on July 24, 2015| 3 Comments »
Even though I know you don’t read poems,
I want to thank you for calling me last night
when your living room was too big for one,
when all the ex-lovers were somewhere else
and even the kids were gone. Thank you
for calling me to say how alone it is.
For half an hour, we were alone together,
weeping and laughing in our separate rooms.
Just tonight I realized I do not know how gravity works.
Something to do with mass. And distance.
How much of what rules us do we not understand?
The vase falls and it breaks. We know that and learn
to be more gentle with our hands. It’s more
out of habit than true understanding. Our loneliness,
too, is a kind of a rule that we spend our whole lives
trying to change, but it is always there.
Eventually we come to see that everything
will be taken from us. Our aloneness is all that is left.
It is only frightening until it is not. Then it frightens us again.
Thank God we are here to explore it together,
this alarming lack of anything to hold onto.
When we say goodbye, it is gentle. We both know
what it feels like to break. There is too much at stake
not to love each other, alone and distant as we are.
Still, It Would Have Been Nice
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged alone, aloneness, love, poem, poetry, togetherness on November 6, 2014| 1 Comment »
only one other
set of footprints in the snow
beside mine—
I try not to hold it against them
for not being yours