Somewhere I’ve never been
reaches across the ocean
and wrenches my thoughts.
I don’t try to push it away.
I let the ache in,
let sorrow do its terrible
work. It slices in
deeper than I want it to,
but I do not resist.
All day I think of the small child
being pulled from the rubble.
All day I think of the many hands
reaching for small frightened body.
All day, I am softened by
grief, ravaged into tenderness.
Posts Tagged ‘tenderness’
Another Reason to Be Kinder
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged kindness, news, tenderness, war on May 17, 2021| 2 Comments »
Though It’s Rusty from Lack of Use
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged kitchen, love, partnership, tenderness, vulnerability on February 20, 2020| Leave a Comment »
Today I wish I were a potato peeler,
able to remove the outer layers of myself,
able to shave off any toughness I’ve developed
to protect, to safeguard, to shield. I want to give
myself to you, the inner sweetness,
the tenderest parts. I want to unpeel
any husk, any rind, any barrier
that would keep you from the heart
of me. I want to meet you vulnerably.
Today I want to take the long thin blade
and make ribbons of my resistance,
make strips of my defenses and watch
them fall like burlap veils. And if I cannot
find the courage to be the one who peels,
let me put the tool in your hand. I’m afraid,
but I am ready. Be sure, love. Be quick.
How It Goes with Hope
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged cat, grief, hope, loss, tenderness, what is on January 15, 2020| 7 Comments »
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Eventually a burning hope |
Watching My Friend Pretend Her Heart Isn’t Breaking
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged friendship, grief, neutron star, poem, poetry, science, tenderness on August 7, 2019| 10 Comments »
On Earth, just a teaspoon of neutron star
would weigh six billion tons. Six billion tons.
The equivalent weight of how much railway
it would take to get a third of the way to the sun.
It’s the collective weight of every animal
on earth. Times three.
Six billion tons sounds impossible
until I consider how it is to swallow grief—
just a teaspoon and one might as well have consumed
a neutron star. How dense it is,
how it carries inside it the memory of collapse.
How difficult it is to move then.
How impossible to believe that anything
could lift that weight.
There are many reasons to treat each other
with great tenderness. One is
the sheer miracle that we are here together
on a planet surrounded by dying stars.
One is that we cannot see what
anyone else has swallowed.
In the Airport
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged airport, kindness, mother, poem, poetry, strangers, tenderness, travel on July 20, 2019| 10 Comments »
I wonder who else today
in Concourse A
is traveling to see their mom
in the hospital, who else
has a parent with a surgery
gone wrong? Who else
could use some tenderness—
perhaps that woman in green
on the transporter? Or maybe
the young mother chasing her child
on the moving walkway? Or
the middle-aged man deliberating
over snacks? Today, it seems
so obvious that all of us
need some tenderness—
regardless our story.
And so when the man
in 31 C offers to lift my suitcase
and fit it somehow
into the overhead bin,
I almost weep with relief,
but instead I smile and say
Thank you, yes, I need help.
All day, I think of how
one small generosity changes
the landscape of the heart.
All day, I am met with chances
to be grateful, to be kind.
Cut Deep
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged poem, tenderness on December 7, 2015| 7 Comments »
Picking up broken glass
with bare hands,
of course I was cut,
but something in me
was curious to learn
the secrets of being sharp.
Something in me
wanted another reason
to be tender
with everyone I meet.
But I Can Taste It
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged poem, poetry, possibility, rain, tenderness, waiting on March 13, 2015| 1 Comment »
in the night air
scent of rain
that does not fall—
sometimes in the kitchen
scent of tenderness
Before We Say a Word
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged awakening, love, poem, poetry, sleep, tenderness on February 27, 2015| 4 Comments »
I like my body in the mornings
when the light has not yet stolen the room,
and when you, in darkness, turn your length
toward my length and bend your body
to match the curve of my spine.
I like the warmth our bodies find,
I like your legs bowed into mine,
your feet like a tangle of roots about my feet.
I like my neck when it’s touched by your breath,
and I like my waist when your hand rests there.
And my belly, I like how soft it is, like sweet dough rising.
So tender, this drowsy, dreamy, yielding state
when we are more flesh than name, more limb than thought,
more breath than what we know.
And the darkness holds us quietly,
your body, my body, oh how we linger,
indulgent, our boundaries blurred,
while all around us, even inside us,
the world with its edges and certainties
begins to dawn.