I hear you in the rain
pouring over me
cold,
drenching.
I’m drowning in you.
Upside down umbrella
beneath a drain spout.
See me tap dancing?
Oh, I’m singing
while you’re pouring
turning roads to light sucking ink.
I think the gutters overflow with you.
You’re sheets
fountains
water falls
rivers
you are an ocean.
I float.
You can make things come true
when you believe them hard enough,
declare them to the universe
visualize the outcome
make it so
make it so
make it so.
Unless everyone in view
is believing, declaring, and visualizing, too
and there’s only room for one of you.
Yeah, that’s hard stuff
it could be worse
Don’t be glum.
Let it go
let it go
let it go.
The burn is sizzling
Smoke from nostrils, ears.
Instead, I’m here;
I need to fuel flames,
Tend an inferno.
Blaze brilliantly,
But now I must douse
The burn in reality.
Small victory
multiplied.
Big tasks
divided
into
parts
so
small–
how could I not succeed?
Deadlines
focus goals.
Day by day,
Chew each bite thoroughly.
Done!
Launch hope with a key stroke.
Completion is victory enough,
but still…
Fingers crossed.
Teresa hated her hair-cut
Wore her hat in class.
Held it tightly when the boys wanted to see
What could possibly be so bad.
Ran home in tears.
The next day,
the hat was off, and no one could figure out
what had bothered her so much.
Her hair looked fine.
She just had to get used to the idea of change.
How often are we afraid of something new,
even when it’s innocuous or perhaps
even better than what was?
Half a century I’ve pondered Teresa’s hair.
I still don’t understand,
what she didn’t like.
Outside the change room,
she looked into the mirror.
Lovely,
polished,
dynamic,
and classy
in the pale blue duster jacket.
Perfectly suited her colouring.
Stunning.
“I love this,” she sighs.
“I love these on other people. I just know that I would never wear it.”
I am aghast. “You could wear it to the grocery store!” She could wear it anywhere.
But no. She left in an orange dress, that made her complexion blotchy.
I have no business being sad, that she put away a pale, blue jacket, that suited her,
because of fears I’m imagining for her.
“Do you imagine I’m conservative?” she asks.
“It doesn’t matter what I think,” I shrug.
But she looked damn fantastic in that blue duster jacket.
Your smile has no illumination,
no dancing twinkle draws the eyes.
What lies will you tell today, when someone
asks if everything is okay?
I expected
in my youth
a natural ending.
You railed against presumption.
Never!
Always!
Hyperbole spun us out,
Now our orbits can’t intersect.
I was okay with that,
until I wasn’t.
We’re not supposed to break promises,
even irrelevant ones.
Curse nostalgia.
Win win you think
and she knows your thoughts,
that you don’t imagine
hers differ.
They do.
She wants you, coming and going.
Sit beside for both parts of the journey,
find moments of connection
have those conversations
that are skipped in the day to day.
Those too rare times when you’re together
with nothing to do but hear each other.
She wants words and laughter and plans.
You leave early. A note on the counter:
meet you there.
She puts her foot on the gas pedal
and travels lonely,
as usual.
Win?
or lose?
This well is dank and dark,
Though they have promised from the depths
She will see stars,
so far, it’s darkness all around.
She only feels
a giant on her chest squeezing
joy, until tears squish dripping out.
She’ll fill this well with grief;
the only escape may be
floating on surface sorrow
until it floods over the wall
with all the sadness she can carry.
Shawn L. Bird 