If Hawaii can move closer to Alaska every year,
and it does, those sunny beaches drifting closer
to aqua blue glaciers, then perhaps, I, too, can move
closer to you in my thoughts, though the gap
between us seems wider than the vast Pacific.
At a rate of 7.5 centimeters a year, there’s little
chance of my black sand and your white peaks
ever sharing a shore. For now it is enough to trust
that great unseen forces might help shift us toward
each other. Even now I am feeling it, the possibility.
Posts Tagged ‘relationship’
After Feeling Stuck for So Long
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged enmity, opposites, possibility, relationship, tectonics on November 1, 2025| 7 Comments »
When We Argue
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged arguing, opening, relationship, tension on October 7, 2025| 2 Comments »
I do not love it, the tension
between us, dark-viscous and thick,
or red-spined and prickly. I don’t
love the way a fat fist forms
in the softness of my belly,
then fossilizes into righteousness,
or unravels into something fetid
and festering. I don’t like when words
feel like sandpaper on my skin,
or worse, when silence feels
like a moat, like a wall, like a sword.
I don’t like feeling like a tree in November
with not a single leaf, barren, stark.
But maybe I love the way meeting tension
eventually teaches me to loosen
my certainty until I am less cement,
more soil. Maybe I love how it
acts like a neon sign that blares
inside me with scarlet all caps:
WHAT YOU THINK MATTERS TO ME.
Maybe I love the way wrestling with tension
invites me to ask more questions of myself,
of the world. This gift I don’t want to unwrap.
How alive I am then as the fierceness of it
fades, leaving me opened in ways
I didn’t know to explore, and feeling
again into how deep they are, these roots.
Opposite Sides
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged connection, opposition, relationship, swimming on May 13, 2025| Leave a Comment »
If you were in Europe and I were in Boston,
it would take eighty days to swim to you.
Sometimes it feels as if you are in England
and I’m standing on the Atlantic’s opposite shore.
Sometimes it’s all I can do to dip my toes in the water.
Sometimes I swim out till I start to fear
what swims with me. Always I turn back.
This time, I want to swim. Want to swim eighty days
if that’s what it takes, regardless how big the waves.
Want to swim eighty days no matter how cold.
Though the waves are big as our country.
Though I am exhausted and afraid of what I might find
on the shores of you. What I long to find: you,
swimming toward me. Want to meet you
at forty days, both of us ungrounded,
both of us vulnerable, both of us ready
to swim toward safety together.
Reflection
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged communion, other, reflection, relationship, unity on July 13, 2022| 5 Comments »
In each other, let us see ourselves.
—Alberto Ríos, “Who Has Need, I Stand with You”
Sometimes when I look in the mirror,
my eyes see only my own reflection.
I forget to see the eyes of my mother,
and her mother, and her mother.
I forget to see the eyes of my sisters
who live in other towns, other countries.
I forget to see the eyes of my brothers
who teach, who fight, who rule, who beg.
I forget how my heart is fueled
by the same electric impulse
that drives every other beating heart.
I forget how my skin is made and remade
from the same carbon, hydrogen, nitrogen and oxygen
that comprises every other human’s skin.
Oh, to remember. Not just when I look in the mirror,
but when I walk down the street.
Not just when I feel drawn to another,
but also when I feel defensive, averse.
Oh, to remember the strange and certain math
that seven point seven five three billion people
equal one cohesive expression
of what it means to be alive.
Your hands, my hands. Your breath, my breath.
Your eyes in my eyes. My eyes in your eyes.
This life, ours.
From the Tip of the Thought
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged communication, erik satie, poem, poetry, relationship, speech on September 3, 2019| Leave a Comment »
inspired by Erik Satie, Gnossienne 1
same phrases, same sighs,
we’ve said them, sighed them before—
and each time the chance
to find (mid-syllable) a door, a new wildflower,
a raincoat, blue, perhaps a wing
(to hear the music, click here. This direction is given when the initial theme is repeated)
Original Sin
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged compassion, poem, poetry, relationship, unlearning on February 16, 2016| 2 Comments »
Tonight I will give you yourself.
All those pretty words you spun
into negligee, all those promises
you strung like pearls and then
tightened around my neck, all
those lovely leashes you made
out of praise, I give them back.
I have always loved being naked.
I think this is what you loved
most about me, too. Once. No one
is at fault for this strange game
of dress up we’ve been playing.
Perhaps it is what we were taught to do.
I unlearn this game. I want to give
you you. I give you your
own nakedness. Any robes
of hope I put on you, I untie
them. See them slip into soft piles
on the floor. Look at you now.
I see I never saw you before.
Out the window, winter is melting.
Everything loses its sheen.
I tried to hate you for the ways
you bound me, though the bounds
were beautiful. Now, all I can feel
is the thrill of this body so bare,
so new. I stare at my feet, my hands
and marvel at how they move.
Is this me? I never knew her.
I know her so intimately.
It is almost sweet now, so innocent,
how we tried to dress each other in dreams.
We didn’t know then that even
the softest words become chains.
I give you yourself, your longing
to be loved in the ways you thought
you needed. I give me myself,
I don’t know what that means,
already I am shedding.
Some Never Learn
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged mice, poem, poetry, relationship on October 31, 2015| 4 Comments »
Don’t think I don’t see you
scampering across my kitchen floor
with that scrap of yarn you’ve stolen
from my old green scarf,
you with your jumpy eyes,
your cold twitchy nose.
Don’t think that I don’t hear you
scratching in my inner walls
with your ever-growing teeth
and your tiny piercing claws.
I still run my fingers
across the thin scars.
And don’t think that just because
I took the cheese out of the trap
that I meant for you to come around.
Don’t think it was on purpose
that I left that piece
of lemon cake beside the bed,
the kind with cream cheese frosting,
the kind you told me once that you like best—
that time when you so sweetly curled
into my hands, your fur as gray as morning light,
I remember, so silken, so soft.
What She Really Wants
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged gift, poem, poetry, relationship, woman on October 30, 2015| 2 Comments »
When she is drought,
be rain, and when
she is rain, be cup.
When she is lost,
let her be her own map,
and when she is wind
be wind. There are trees
in her, no, whole orchards.
Be soil and sunshine and bee.
When she is seed,
be time. When she
is moon, be sea.
Love,
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged brokenness, love, poem, poetry, relationship on August 30, 2015| 1 Comment »
Though I am undeniably broken
I come to you with no need to be fixed.
I come to you the way one river
meets another river—not joining
out of thirst but because
there is so much power
and beauty in giving oneself
to another, in moving
through the world together.
I come to you the way the half moon
comes into the yard—I could be more
whole, but in the meantime,
I will bring you everything
I have.
Who Am I to You?
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged jazz, poem, poetry, relationship on August 22, 2015| 1 Comment »
please, not the book
about jazz sitting pretty on the shelf—
let me be the hard-swinging
restless improvisation
slipping right off the known scale
One Confession
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged love, paradox, poem, poetry, relationship on June 28, 2015| 2 Comments »
hold me, I say
then put on a dress
of thorns—
blood on your cheek, your hands,
I kiss you there
Yes, I Think I am Ready for That
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged change, love, poem, poetry, relationship on November 30, 2014| 4 Comments »
Take off your hat. Take off
your smile. Take off anything
you put on to impress me.
Bring me your eyes. Bring me
your Sunday morning. Bring me your
open hands. Let us sit. It does
not matter much if we speak
or do not speak. What is there,
really, that must be said?
Outside the snow is melting.
We both know it will come again.
Outside whatever birds are still here
are not moving from tree to tree.
There is nothing moving, it seems,
but we both know that the world
is made of change. Give me
your weight. Give me your
light. Give me your fear
and your grays and your yes.
And here, here is my sunrise.
Here is my spiral. Here is my apple
tree, my brittle bones, my
deepest well, my empty glass.
Little Lie
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged expectation, gratitude, poem, poetry, relationship on October 11, 2014| 2 Comments »
Today it is blessing enough
that I did not drop the green vase,
did not lose my son’s place in his book,
did not spill the full bottle of wine nor trip
on my own feet while running, did not fall into a puddle.
So much that didn’t happen to be grateful for.
We did not get lost in the corn maze for hours
without our warm coats. I did not drop a baby.
The river did not overflow its banks. The raspberries
were a little sour, but at least they had no mold.
And as for that sweet thing that you didn’t say
that I wished you would have, well,
that detail seems so small amidst all these other
wonderful things that didn’t happen
that it’s no big deal you didn’t say it.
I barely noticed it was missing at all.
Apology
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged poem, poetry, relationship, right vs. wrong on May 29, 2014| 1 Comment »
Sometimes I forget that you
are already whole. I imagine
that I might fix you. I apologize
for this. It rises not from what
you’ve done, but from my lack
of grace. In the riverbed, look,
not a single rock is out of place.
In the field, every blade of grass
is exactly where it’s supposed to be.
I can tell myself this—but
I have not learned the art
of leaning into the world
exactly as it is. I make up exceptions.
I make up my rules. I think
I know something. And then
I trip on my certainty,
my pretty shoulds lose all their feathers.
Oh this practice,
it disarms us so perfectly,
this practice of loving each other.
Three on Burning Bridges
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged burning bridges, poem, poetry, relationship, unity on April 16, 2014| 1 Comment »
after the bridge
is burnt it doesn’t much matter,
the why
*
everything breaks
eventually and something
contains all this brokenness
*
there was never
a bridge anyway—it’s our own
charred flesh we smell
New Plan
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged choosing, love, poem, relationship on December 6, 2013| 3 Comments »
terrified to tiptoe
another inch closer to you,
I run to you instead
Digging In
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged garden, poem, poetry, potato, relationship on October 3, 2013| 3 Comments »
There’s no way to know
before the spade has opened the earth
what we might find below.
By this time, I forget
what varieties I have planted,
Sangria or Russian Blue
or Russet or Yellow Fingerling,
forget what to expect there,
a still growing revelation
not so far beneath the surface.
Darling, come, bring
your spade. I’m not talking
about potatoes.
After the Flash Flood
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged appreciation, love, poem, poetry, rain, relationship on September 11, 2013| 1 Comment »
Like quiet rain falling for days,
that is how I want to love you.
So that no part of you goes
untouched. The rain softens
everything, brings out luster and hue
in even the dullest gray stone, and with
the tiniest bit of light, the rain turns
the whole world to shine. So quiet
you almost don’t even notice,
but there it is, everywhere you are.