my hands

worn, weary
how does the poison ivy know to target the ring fingers?
i worry, i wear at
the blisters and scratch. oh, i scratch.

whatever

i smell of chlorine
bleached clean by the chemicals in the pool water
repetition
arms
one after the other after the other after
breathe

a man on a trapeze told me you can do anything while breathing
not sure i believe him

fragile

life is infinite, though my days may be numbered.
it stretches before me.
i see a horizon; do i run to it or from it?
all i know is what i know.
the human being is simultaneously the most
fragile
and the most
strong instrument of our creativity.

drafting, part three

too much

i've forgotten how to write.
words swirl; threatening to overflow and spill upon
the page without rhyme (who needs rhyme), but also
without reason (i need reason).
so you read as i write -
topics:
sickness creeps unaware into the room
words become sparse
hints are not enough
why don't we talk?

enough
for now.

drafting stolen lines ...

Tell me... have you ever thought...of changing your life?*

what is this word, change?
what is this need, to be changed?

did you not notice your hair, growing longer every day as you moved ritualistically through the basic mechanics of our life? or did you wake up one day and feel a need to shave it bare against your scalp?

i believe you, i, we are always in a state of flux, but

i do not want to change my life. i am not the wrong size, bought at the not-so-local, local big box; returnable if the receipt can be found, still lingering in the bottom of your purse with last winter's chapstick and some random lemon drop. i am not last season's color, mismatched when viewed against new things sprung around you.

Perhaps i shrank; grew too tight, squeezing breath from you, struggling with change. Perhaps i withdrew into the quiet inside, leaving you alone, struggling with change. Perhaps i failed to say

i am just me. unabashedly, unashamedly i am just me. and i love you yet.

* "I stole the first line of this post from the play, Betrayal, by Harold Pinter" and i got the idea from a blawg at which i lurk with regularity ...

drafting once again, perhaps not more i

i can hear the dog, all seventy-eight point five pounds of him whimpering,
as his legs quiver in the dark and some unknown
fear takes flight. nine point five years of comfort offered in that self same dark,
meaningless.
i cannot cover; i cannot squelch. that.
that thing that crawls out of the night, crawls out of the rumbles of thunder,
and shakes his core.
i cannot share enough of me. i cannot give enough of me.
i cannot replace that first brief, yet far too endless, lifetime of fear with my lifetime of love.
not for that dog. not for my wife.
and i quiver in my dark, alone with that failure.