Please don’t tell me what will happen.
I’ve peeked before at the end of a book
and know how one detail learned too soon
can ruin the entire story.
Not that I wish to be patient.
Of course, I want to know what’s coming,
but this story only works in present tense.
Even when it makes me weep,
even when I’d rather put this story down,
even when I’d like to rewrite the last scene,
please, don’t give me even a little hint.
I am not sure I believe in happy endings,
but I believe in turning the page,
in holding the weight of the book in my hands,
and racing through the text,
my eyes eager to discover what comes next.
Posts Tagged ‘story’
Note to My Future Self
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged future, patience, self talk, story on May 23, 2021| 2 Comments »
Lights Out
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged daughter, father, story on June 20, 2020| 5 Comments »
We would be tucked into our twin beds,
and dad would sit in the door way.
Every night, he’d tell us a story about a boy
and a girl who were very much
like my brother and me, only they lived
amongst the dinosaurs. I don’t remember
how the stories went, but I remember
how I loved them, how my father’s voice
became part of the night, how everything
always turned out right for the kids
in the story. How much I wanted
to be that girl who rode on a pterodactyl,
and how grateful I felt to be the girl I was,
snug under the thin blue blanket,
our small room a cave where anything
could happen, the low tones of my father
quietly cradling me toward sleep.
Next Draft
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged ending, story on June 9, 2020| Leave a Comment »
Endings are what give stories meaning.
—Erin Morgenstern, The Starless Sea
If the ending
is what gives
a story meaning,
then may we
never learn what
this story means.
I don’t want
to reach anything
like a vague
ever after. Here,
take what’s left
of my blank—
please feel free
to lose our
table of contents,
rearrange our index,
renumber our pages,
revise the tension,
and if we
near a denouement,
then my dear
let’s have stacks
of pink erasers
on hand, ready
to sacrifice any
resolution that might
be goodbye—know
I would rather
struggle with you
in the messy
middle than ever
arrive at the
end.
Once Upon A
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged ars poetica, friendship, relationships, story on May 28, 2020| 4 Comments »
Because you are the porch,
I am the rocking chair.
Because you are the pen,
I am the unfinished poem.
In the conversation of what happens next,
I am always the pause.
I am always the pause
and you the verb.
And if there should be a run on sentence
that jogged right through the
end of the story, way past the end,
well, I would not be the period.
But I would be ever after.
And I would be the one still listening after that.
Tucking in my Daughter in the Time of Corona Virus
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged Corona Virus, daughter, mom, parenting, story, wisdom on March 13, 2020| 6 Comments »
And because she is wise
in the ways the young are,
my daughter, frightened and weeping,
asked between sobs
for a happy story.
There are times when a story
is the best remedy—
not because it takes us away
from the truth but because
it leads us closer in.
I told her the story of her birth,
and we laughed until
it was my turn to cry as I realized
no matter how scary the world,
what a miracle, the birth of a child.
Then, as fear made a sneaky return,
we whispered a list of things we
were grateful for, falling asleep with these
words on our breaths: cats, books, rivers,
home, family, soft blankets, music.
One Heroine
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged story on March 5, 2020| 2 Comments »
How Many Pencils Would It Take?
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged ars poetica, pencil, poem, poetry, science, story on September 8, 2019| 2 Comments »
The pencil, it turns out,
has never contained lead.
It’s always been graphite—
a form of solid carbon.
How much of what we think
we know is just a mistaken story
passed on for centuries?
And the human body, it turns out,
contains enough carbon
for 9,000 pencils—
that is a fact of the world,
a fact like the distance
from earth to the moon,
a fact like 99 percent of all human DNA
is the same. I’d like to think I will use up
my pencils, one every three days,
writing the story of what it is
to be alive here, to fall in love,
to disagree, to fail, to try again.
I want to write of healing,
write of the autumn air,
how it touches everything
with its cool transparency.
Write of how we are here
to revel in beauty, to find ourselves
in each other, to serve a story greater
than the one we know how to write,
serve the story that even now
is writing us.
One in the Eye of the Beholder
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged aging, books, poem, poetry, reading, story on January 25, 2018| 8 Comments »
reading the book again—
the dogeared pages the same,
the story in them, wholly changed
While leaning over the salsa, Lauren tells me
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged lines, poem, poetry, story on February 22, 2017| Leave a Comment »
“Sometimes I draw a straight line
and the other artists tell me
to squiggle it—“
all night I re-imagine
our storyline with curves
Stages of Grief
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged grief, poem, poetry, story, surrender on August 8, 2016| 4 Comments »
We sat in the round
and rubbed our stories
like prayer beads that
we’ve kept,
but one man let
the world erode him—
so naked, so sacred
he wept.
Things to Do While Trapped Inside a Book
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged book, life, poem, story on May 11, 2016| 1 Comment »
Rewrite the first chapter,
the one in which someone else
starts to tell your story.
Notice how when you erase it,
all the chapters after it
go blank. Fields of blank pages.
Skies of blank pages. Blank minutes,
blank days, blank years. Listen
for what’s left of your story—
nothing. Miss your friends.
Miss your mom. Miss your old house
and your problems. Go back
to chapter one. Rewrite it exactly
as it was written, but keep
the pen in your hand. You want
to be in charge of the story
from here on in.
It Used to Rule Me
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged butterfly, poem, poetry, story on February 14, 2015| 3 Comments »
that old story—
I laugh now through the darkest part
and the weight breaks
into a thousand thousand
monarchs
Pay Attention, Heart
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged cosmos, gardening, poem, poetry, story on October 3, 2014| 2 Comments »
After the frost, the cosmos fronds
are brittle and brown. Not a hint
of return. Not a trace of pink. Brown.
Partially dust already. Sometimes it needs
to be this way in order for us to do
the work that must be done—the pulling
up of things by the roots and discarding
them into a pile. No, if there were any green chance
that the cosmos might bloom again,
it would be easier to tell the self a story
about how, with some luck and some care,
the plant might leap back to life.
But the story is a trick ladder,
every rung is covered in oil and even
if you reach the top it leads to nowhere.
Look. The flowers are dead. They were lovely once.
Say thank you. And give the stem a tug.
Said the Woman with the Pen in Her Hand
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged beginning, end, poem, poetry, story on July 1, 2014| 1 Comment »
For all the history of grief
an empty doorway and a maple leaf.
—Archibald MacLeish
I wanted to start this story
at the end, but couldn’t think
of any stories I believe are truly over.
Certainly not the one about you
and me and our lilies, the way they
bloomed beyond their time, how
even long after they dropped their petals
they still manage to plant themselves
in my thoughts every week. And bloom again.
The end. Well, there’s just nothing
more to say after those two words,
and nothing else to listen to.
I don’t know about you, but I love
a cliffhanger in every story except my own,
love the way my stomach
turns inside out while I wonder what
happens next. Will he forgive her?
Will her body open again like day lilies,
over and over? Our books are written
in unreadable ink. And oh, this longing
for completion, this longing to know.
Any garden could tell you that even after
the flowers die there’s the long slow plot of rotting,
the unhurried scenes of worms and grubs,
and even if the flowers are later replaced
by weeds, well the story itself doesn’t care
where it goes. Only the hero wants to know
that everything will be okay. But the story
it just keeps rising from the loam
of any old once upon a time.
Never Far Away
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged inquiry, love, need, poem, poetry, story, Tricycle Magazine on April 18, 2014| 1 Comment »
We tell stories about who we are and what life is, but seldom see that they’re only stories. The good news is that the truth is never far away. It’s right here, in fact, posing as backdrop.
—Erik Hansen, “The Island,” Tricycle Magazine
Tonight the truth is posing as a short-haired cat,
gray and increasingly white muzzled.
She wants love. Now. She will scratch
for it, push for it, shove for it, yowl.
She has been left alone too long and
her black spine rises up to meet my hand
as I reach down toward her back. Not enough.
She leaps up and curls herself into an island
on my lap. People are usually more polite.
Unless we pout. Send darts with our eyes
with a note attached to the shaft that says,
Fuck you. I need you. Goddammit. Now. Please?
Oh the truth. How it messes everything up.
Like the story that says, I need your love.
It’s got so much drama, so much pull.
That story, a woman could build a whole life
around it before she ever thought to ask herself,
Is that true? The cat curls deeper into
my lap. I feel the tug toward the love
that I call you. My spine arcs as it rises up,
starving for your touch. My claws
come out as I start to purr. Who says
it has to make sense. I’ll do
whatever it takes to make you close.
Winter Mundane
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged glove, poem, poetry, story on March 5, 2014| 3 Comments »
A glove in the road,
there it was, so misshapen
and flattened that at first I mistook it
for a dead bird, black,
run over by countless tires
until its feathers were
as unrecognizable
and useless as an old single
glove lost on the road.
There was some Once
Upon a Time in it, enough
that I read a whole life story
into the trampled threads.
I imagined how another someone
might peel up the remnants
of that old glove, take it home,
stretch it onto a canvas
and paint it, reclaim it as art.
But I was more filled with the part
of the story in which I walk past The End,
past the black glove, changed who knows how
by this simple trodden thing, finding myself
on the cliff of tears and strangely unable
to stop one foot from moving
in front of the other.
There Lived A …
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged forgiveness, love, poem, poetry, self acceptance, story on December 2, 2013| 1 Comment »
Forgive me.
I was hurt
you did not
seem to care
about the story
of me. Ha.
The story of me.
It is not
so grand a thing.
This living, now
living is grand.
This living is
everything. But
the story? It
is just marketing.
Something I tell
myself and others
to believe
I am important.
Special. As if
it could be
any other way.
Every one of us
telling each other’s stories
every time
we open our mouths.
In the end,
which is to say now,
it does not matter
if you read
a single poem
I write. It does not
matter if you
never hear about
the silver wig
I ordered today
for the show
next week I
bought you a ticket for
so you might
be there with me.
Isn’t that funny,
after all these years,
I still long
for you to see me.
As if that act
of witness would fulfill
some mysterious
math in which
one and one
make something blissful
I dream is possible—
the way I try
sometimes (impossibly)
to be that mysterious
integer for you.
With this slight remove
of space and time,
I see it does
not matter if you
hear my story
or miss the show.
But it matters
if I can sit with you tonight
and know in my every breath
that I am enough.
That I have no lack
that you could ever fill.
I am empty for now
of once upon a times,
including the story that says
I need your forgiveness.
Here are two chairs.
They are side by side.
My darling. Here we are.
There Was A
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged poem, poetry, story on June 28, 2013| 1 Comment »
Tonight, the story
sits alone
in the car.
It is not
anyone’s fault.
No fingers to point.
It likes being alone
with no other narrators
interrupting,
no breaks for beer commercials,
no subplots pushing their way in.
Alone, the story hardens,
the way river water freezes.
Though one force says go, go, go!
Keep going, keep going!—
another force proves stronger,
renders it set.
To say once upon
is not necessary.
The air all around the story
is softened by wildfire smoke.
The scent of the world
turning to ash
touches everything,
but the fire itself
is far away. No,
says the story
finding its pen,
this is not
the end
not yet.
Entering the Story
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged Hans Christian Andersen, help, light, poem, poetry, story, The Little Match Girl on May 10, 2013| 3 Comments »
I find you
crouched in the cold
lighting matches
one after another.
It is a long, long night
and it is not near over.
There is nowhere
you want to return.
You strike another.
And again.
We cup our palms
around your light.
What do you see in it?
I want to offer you
bread, a blanket, a room,
my hands, a different ending,
a kinder plot.
You want only
another match.
Perhaps Easier to Say When It’s Light
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged allowing, darkness, light, poem, poetry, story on April 29, 2013| 1 Comment »
When it’s dark,
we tell ourselves
any story we can
about the return
of the light. Say
there’s a mother
grieving her daughter
who’s lost
to an underground king.
Say there’s a sister
who hides in a cave
fearing her brother
the god of storms.
Say that through lures
or begging, the girls
are returned, they
bring light
in their wake.
Use history. Say
the light’s always
come back before.
Use science. Say
it has something
to do with the tilt
and the turn and the rate.
Get fierce. Say you’ve seen
enough of hate.
Get desperate. Say
it takes only a crack.
Start chanting. Start
dancing. Bake cakes
filled with cream.
Give your blood. Give
money. Give any offering.
Or taste the darkness.
Begin to know it as itself,
not as the lack of light.
Let it touch you everywhere.
Let it touch your everywhere else.
Feel how infinite it is.
Say nothing. Get quieter.
Be very curious.