You gave me more

In one silly little game, you gave yourself.
The words were direct enough
You left them here.
And then you retreated.

I sit here in this empty space
Trying to salvage all that you said
I wish I had kept your words somehow
So I wouldn't feel like I imagined it.

You said the things that I had thought.
You said the things that I had felt.
You said things that I didn't know that I needed or wanted to hear.
In you, I saw myself. 
I grew to trust you.
I ended up giving you the whole truth.

I gave you everything you wanted.
And you gave me something I never knew I needed.
You gave me more in those couple of weeks
Than a decade of tears. 

heartache

there is a certain heartache in loneliness
in the words you have swimming before your eyes
the things that are left unsaid
in the silence of the night

there is a palpable pain in discontent
in knowing that you tried and it didn't work out
that your heart is closed
the moment has passed

i hear shuffling in the other room
sometimes mumbling too
i don't reach out
i dont want to know
my heart is closed
the moment has passed. 

Melancholy by the sea.

In my stupidity, my lack of foresight, I never thought of how I was returning to the ghosts of happiness past. I just thought 318 miles, 70mph highway, and endless sun. I didn't think about how the last time we were there, Mom was a different person, how I was a different person, how my kids were not from a broken home, or how bereft and isolated we would all suddenly feel.

The hotel was a total shit hole. I can't believe we paid that much money for the displeasure of staying there. The rooms were fine once you were inside. The outside spoke of better times, forty years ago, when perhaps it was cool to stay at a motel. Not a hotel. The desperation of the place only added to my insecurities in myself. Maybe I had just fucked this all up too? Just like my marriage, my life, my children's happiness?

The whole time I was there I felt like I was hiding from my Mom. I didn't want her to see I was sad. I didn't want her to feel responsible in any way or shape or form. I mourned her as she sat beside me. On the long highway stretches I held her hand, she rubbed my knuckles, I squeezed her knee. I had a bit of bronchitis/ strep this past week so I have a cloying cough. She told me to get medicine and to go to the doctor. The lady with a terminal disease, the lady who can't swallow water without choking, is worried about my stupid seasonal cough brought about by being allergic to the state of Georgia.

I asked if she wanted a beach chair. She said yes please. And now I, husbandless, was my own sherpa across the sand. Other husbands actually volunteered to carry my stuff. I know their wives would kill them. So I decline, stubborn, I can do this by myself. I carried an entire carload of things from the hotel to the beach. The children ran ahead of us screaming, their boogie boards floating in the breeze. Mom shuffled slightly behind, me her breathing laborious, her mouth agape, eyes intent on the prize, focus on the sea.

I sat next to her, watching her sapphires sparkle. My mom has the most incredible blue eyes. She is so silent now, that any word from her is like the holy grail. Her tongue is her own worst enemy. Or perhaps it is her vocal cords, her brain riddled by dementia, how to force the meaning into a slur, how to phrase questions when you have lost the desire for answers, how to ask specific things, when no one can understand you. She said "it is so relaxing".... And just sighed... content.... and my heart weeps. My heart breaks. A thousand times through and through, the selfishness of this comes to the surface. I am losing my best friend. I am losing her. The her who filled in all of the gaps in my lonely marriage. The one who taught me how to be a mom. My 7h30am driving in the morning best friend who would worry if I called her a minute late. She. Our mom. Our granny. She doesn't deserve to go so young.

At night in the hotel room I watch her. She cant put the shower on for herself anymore. The first night, in my haste, the haste of an impatient person, you know the one who wants her children to grow up fast and be potty trained and learn to talk so theyre not so much of a chore, that haste, she hopped in the shower and the water was too warm, and fortunately I heard her say "ow". I felt so bad. It didnt burn her, fortunately, just it was uncomfortable. I learnt on the following showers to test the water on my wrist. My mom who had always loved scalding water, now required more tepid water, the water that would be more pleasing to a child.

In so many ways she still is a grown up, autonomous, with dabs of perfume behind her ears. She cares for herself. She has all of her toiletries organized in a striped bag. She packs very, very well. She even brought extra towels. But I brought home her washing to wash for her. I sprayed her stains on her shirts for her. She dribbles when she eats. Or sometimes she sprays when she chokes. In many ways you can sense her frailty.

Her hair is so painfully thin, you can see the pink scalp underneath. Her hair was fine before, as mine has really become of late, but this awful thinness, like that of a person undergoing chemo. Her muscles around her jaw are slacking. The faces she pulls are not her own. She makes "puppy noises" at night, unaware. I didn't mind them. I could hear her breathing and compared to snoring, I was happy to have them. She is physically changing in front of us. She now has a limp. She cant open bottles of water, medicine bottles, or strange packaging. She brought me the zip on her beach coverup, where the pull on the zip had twisted upwards, and had me fix it, akin to one of my daughters.

And inside the turmoil rages.

She herself is blissfully unaware. It is we who are all falling down, broken. My poor dad. My poor poor father. I was watching her comb her whispy-spider-web hair over her pink frail scalp and thinking I wish I had someone to love me the way that he loves her. Virtually toothless and broken. When you are wordless and silent, useless and easy to forget, who will love you yet?

I fell in love with the barman once.

I fell in love with the barman once. It was past a long summer, and into the autumn chill. It was during the phase of my life where eternity was suspended on the fronds of smoke that swirled in the club, shifting rhythmically to the thud of the music, illuminated by piercing and pulsating strobes.

I fell in love with the barman once. It was in the depths of a room so black we had to learn to navigate our way around by memory. If the strobe fell we were plunged into velvet black, the breath of the people next to us so close and so sticky, our sweat intermingling. We grew to know and love those we saw frequently. And Jon was no exception.

I fell in love with the barman once. Except he wasn't at working when it happened. I think it was over a mushroom burger at Ba Pita on Rockey Street. I don't know if he wowed me with his love of a good book. Or because of the fact that he had loved our Mix since the beginning of time.

I fell in love with the barman once. Our Mix gave us full permission. I still remember his whorl-less fingers, his baby smooth feet, the smell of his hair gel on his temples, the blackness of his hair, the milkiness of his perfect skin and how when I was wearing heels, his face only came up to my chest.

I fell in love with the barman once. I would sit on his bar, listen for the last song, ride home with him in a taxi, and fall into bed. I fell in love with the white socks almost up to his knees. His black shoes. His hand curled around a cigarette. I didn't fall in love with him per se. I fell in love with how he loved our Mix. I fell in love with how Mix gave him to me.