Your eyes glow
when you see me across the room.
It’s been a long time.
You’re still wearing your heart
on your arm.
Once again,
I feel appreciation for your admiration,
awkward it’s still unrequited.
Oh, the confusion of my youthful charms.
Thank you, for
reminding me
so sweetly
who I used to be.
Boxed up
memories, wrapped carefully
in torn tissue paper,
worn over years.
Boxed up
histories, revisited annually-
unwrapping melancholy,
tying it on a tree.
The world is flocked white
and I stretch my toes searching for your lingering warmth.
Absent.
It’s slow on the road today,
highway’s slick and I wish I could take a sick day.
Absent.
The world is flocked white
like it’s powdered me on the trees; I’m empty.
Absent.
The world is flocked white
I want to abrogate responsibility and hibernate.
Absent.
It’s unexpected moments
that honey drip from yesterday
crystalizing through today
and crunching in cubes tomorrow.
Sometimes bitter,
mostly sweet.
Tonight,
we’ll laugh until tears streak our cheeks
and remember all those moments
that made this a special place.
But beneath the laughter
will be the melancholy knowing
that with these leavings
we are left to try to rebuild something new.
I suppose we’ll be okay,
but I can’t help but wish you’d stay.
.
.
.
(End of the school year. Staff leaves. New staff arrives. Some years it’s just so fabulously synergistic that it is particularly depressing to see the end).
Once upon a time
Just a few of us at this party
Laughing across time zones.
Now, sometimes it feels
like drunks have crashed it.
I miss then
.
.
So many fond memories of Outlander life on Twitter in summer of 2013. Feeling nostalgic this week after discovering all those old tweets doing my Sam Heughan post the other day.
I light blue and white candles
bake cardamom spiced breads
and remember a home
far away.
.
.
.
Today is the 97th anniversary of Finnish independence.
hyvää itsenäisyyspäivää kaikille suomalaisille
Runo Suomeksi:
Itsenäisyyskynttilät
pulla
muistan
ja olen ikava sinulle,
Suomen maa.
,
(I was an exchange student in Finland when I was 18. I have been back a couple of times, but I’m still waiting for my Finns to come visit me in Canada!)
I wait
in the hollow place
for you
You happily celebrate
the concavities
but appreciate
the complexities
of the convexities.
In hollow places
grace erases traces
of solemnity and
embraces totality,
while
I wait
for you.
Seven days
since you promised,
the grey cloak
over the hills
offers no warmth
for my wishful heart.
I’m sad, she says,
her head resting
upon his shoulder.
Words greeted by silence
that hovers
like a malevolent precipice.
Why, he says, are you choosing
to make yourself sad?
I did not choose to be sad, she says.
So then, why did you say, This is sad? he says.
What? she says.
You said, This is sad, he says.
I did not, she says.
I said, I’m sad. She says.
No. You didn’t, he says.
Yes. I did. She says, sighing.
Silence weaves around them like water
filling between the cracks.
Now,
I’m angry, she says.
Shawn L. Bird 