COMPANIONSHIP

I.
This pile of dread builds
like macular degeneration
or my husband’s snore.

II.
These knives
cannot even cut strings,
little lone the shards of yesterday’s defeat.

III.
“May I speak frankly
for a moment,”
said the professor to his students.

Their thoughts trailed off
as their faint heads bobbed
in the rhythmic motion of “yes.”

IV.
I have this heap
of blue and yellow fabrics
but no idea how to quilt them together.

V.
When I turned to the shadow,
Fear was there, smiling.
A toothy, pleased-with-himself grin.

The train runs every 40 minutes,
but it’s 2,000 miles away.
My only escape.

LIKE CLOCKWORK

My mind
is a riot,
never quiet.
With wheels
that turn,
spin and burn.

I have this silhouette —
a shadow of myself
I carry around
in my pocket.
The other half
of a best friend locket.

Somewhere along the path,
self pity and disdain
gave way to blissful organization,
and a release of pent up pain.

No more crying in the closet!
No more aimless shame!
Only the realness of what is real,
And a shoulder for the blame.

TOPOGRAPHY

When I was 17,
we met at the local coffee shop,
before Starbucks was a thing.
You side-long glanced at me,
over your book.
I noticed instantly
and was unable to be coy.

You were jaded —
freshly burned.
Her name was Noelle.
A few months later,
you showed me a strip of black-and-white
photo booth pictures —
smiling, tongues sticking out,
Noelle nestled comfortably in the frame.
You were looking for a rebound.
I didn’t know how to be someone’s rebound.

I was sharing a condo with roommates.
You moved into the tiny nook
near the stairs.
Rent was cheap.
I was a pawn.
“This doesn’t mean there’s anything
between us,”
you made sure to state.
I brushed it off, like no big deal.
But it was a huge deal.
You ate at me
through the walls.

I had a dream about you recently.
You asked if I knew where Virginia
was on the map,
but you had it covered with your finger.
It seemed like you did it on purpose.
You never wanted me to find you
or discover who you were…
another white mark on my chalkboard.
I woke up chilled,
my teeth chattering uncontrollably.

MUSINGS

I’ve learned over the years not to hang out with people I don’t like; people who are cheap, people who aren’t funny, people who are mean or insincere. I’ve learned to say, “NO!” emphatically. I’ve learned who my true friends are. I’ve learned that I don’t have to finish reading a book I start and can’t get into, just because a critic liked it or because someone else deemed it a classic. I’ve learned to listen to music that makes me sing (and to my daughter’s chagrin) might make me want to dance. I’ve learned not to stress as much over things I cannot control. I’ve learned not everyone will like me; I accept it and move on. I’ve learned that having a bit of chocolate after lunch makes me happy. I’ve learned that hot Chai tea soothes me and can alter my mood for the better. I’ve learned to let go a little. I’ve learned that insomnia can be productive, and that a 30-minute afternoon nap works wonders. I’ve learned the fundamentals of a person don’t change too often, so you need to accept them for who they are or walk away if their behavior is off-putting. I’ve learned to make time for the people and things I love the most. I’ve learned there are things I will never understand. I’ve learned I’ve still a lot left to learn.

ALWAYS RIGHT

We are the flowers
of carnality
raised on Wonder Bread
and after thought.

We exist
only because
we’re forced to–
because dying
seems too messy.

We spray paint
prayers to God
on our walls of insanity
then drive back
to the lap of luxury.

We join rallies and unions
but won’t commit
with both feet inside the door.

We smell like perfume
and purchase Prada
and Porches in mass.

We work this
like it will all be gone tomorrow.

Breathing is optional.

TEENAGER DROWNING

One of the worst things to happen to me as a teenager was the two weeks of the swim unit in gym class. That statement makes me sound like a huge baby, like I didn’t have any “real problems” as a teen, which isn’t true. But read on, and you’ll gain a better understanding of my plight.

As a youth, I was athletic. I wasn’t a star athlete in any sport, but I was capable at pretty much every sport I tried. Not only that, but I was extremely competitive and was coach-able. I could easily run a mile in less than eight minutes. Bouncing a tennis ball on a racket 200 times in a row was a cinch. My dad taught me well how to throw a softball and I did NOT “throw like a girl.” When I was in middle school, nearly everyone played basketball in the gym during lunch hour. Shooting three-pointers was my favorite thing in the world, and I was better at it than almost anyone. During my sophomore year, I trained and traveled to play games with a Junior Olympic volleyball team. Nearly every sport felt natural to me. However; when it came to swimming, not only was I terrible at it, but I also had a fear of deep water.

Gym class was in the mornings, so you had to schlep from the main building over to the pool with your swim gear in tow, plus everything required to get ready for the day. Fortunately for me, I was not the type of girl who wore a lot of makeup or had to blow my hair dry. I’m pretty sure the girls who did were late to their next class every day that we had swimming. I grew up in a conservative environment. Even people of the same gender didn’t whip off their clothes in front of each other in the locker rooms. “We’re all girls here, so it doesn’t matter,” was not an oft uttered phrase. This made stripping naked and putting on a swim suit an especially tricky task. You either had to try and hold up a towel for a make-shift dressing room (awkward) while you changed or you had to wait for one of the four bathroom stalls to become available so you could change in private. Is there anything worse than the wet, hair strewn floors of a swimming pool locker room? Not much comes to mind. At this pool, the women’s locker room was at the front of the building and the men’s locker room was at the back opposite corner. Every day, no matter how quickly we tried to change, the boys would already be waiting in the pool as we left the locker room. I remember the creepy silence of teenage boys ogling us as we made our way to the practice pool. Some of them could have used tissues to wipe the drool from their mouths. It was like they had never seen 15-year-old girls in swimsuits in their short lives. I do not get embarrassed easily, but this may have been a time when I felt my cheeks turn red as those boys’ eyes bored holes into us.

Our gym teacher was a football coach first and foremost. Teaching wasn’t particularly his forte. He was more machine than man. If I would have known back then what ‘roid rage was, I would have used it to describe him. You never knew what was going to set him off. He had a curly, short mullet and whenever we were in the weight room and he would get upset, you’d see a purple vein in his forehead pulsate as if it were trying to break free from under the skin. There were several times when people witnessed him hurling chairs (ala Bobby Knight). Once in class when a kid wasn’t paying attention to the instruction being given, the coach hurled a basketball at his head — going the speed of approximately 90 miles-per-hour. That kid shut up quickly and probably still has brain damage to this day.

During our swim weeks, I’m fairly certain the coach’s intent was to see one of us drown. He never got in the pool with us, and instead attempted to teach us how to do the strokes from his perch above near the bleachers. I still remember him standing there looking like a flamingo as he attempted to extol upon us the proper way to scissor kick. After we’d semi-learned the strokes, we then had to swim some laps. None of us had goggles or swim caps, so my long hair was always plastered across my eyes and getting into my mouth and making me gag. I can’t remember which day of the week it was, because it all blurs together, but the coach gathered everyone in the four-foot deep section of the pool. This was to be our lesson in water safety, undertows and what-have-you. Total, there were probably 75 of us and he made us jog in a circle. He did this in order to simulate a whirlpool. If you were about to be sucked into the vortex and attempted to grab the wall on the side, he would smack your hand away with a pole. Had I known what was to come later, I would have prayed to have died in our simulated undertow that day. For the next section of the course was diving.

I’d never been taught proper diving technique. I wasn’t a swimmer after all, so where on earth would I have learned how to dive? Swimming pools in the area of town where I lived were few and far between. I’d taken swim lessons, but not since I was about 11. We were expected to individually perform a dive and the coach then gave us a grade. He’d made it perfectly clear that you needed to have proper form. If you went to the edge of the diving board and did a cannonball or just jumped in, you’d get an “F”. The thought of getting an “F” terrified me even more than the thought of performing a dive. Everyone in the class sat and watched as each person made their way to the end of the diving board and performed their fete. If I ever end up in Hell, that’s what it will feel like. It will feel like this particular day in gym class when I was a nervous 15-year-old girl in a swimsuit, being forced to dive with 75 pairs of eyes watching me, including perverted teenage boys. As I made my way to the edge of the board, I recall taking a deep breath in and forming a triangle over my head with my hands. I tried to jump, get my toes to point up over my head, but all I managed to do was a huge belly flop. As I surfaced, I heard the collective snickers of classmates. The coach’s face looked like he was smelling something terrible as he wrote my grade down on his clipboard.

At the end of this punishing two weeks, we had to tread water for 30 minutes. I’ve never been more nervous in my life than I was that day. Somehow though, it ended up being the best part of the entire class. I kept my head up for the first five minutes or so and chatted with my friends. After that, I tipped my head back and imagined a pillow, while my arms and legs continued their circular motions. It was quiet under the water. Peaceful even. When I surfaced again, the 30 minutes was over, and it was time to dry off and head to my next class, and I lived to tell the tale.

MY DEEPEST SYMPATHIES

I feel sorry for the non-writers.
Those who are unable
to let words flow easily
from pen to page,
from fingers to keyboard.
I can’t imagine that wasteland…
that inability to convey.
I was rarely told I talked too much,
for most of my time was spent
dreaming up poetry.

Sometimes,
I would sit in the comfort
of my best friend’s bedroom
and wait for her to get home
from a track meet or work.
I’d easily create a poem
about our latest happenings.
I’d drip our heartaches,
our good times,
the trials of life,
and our latest crushes
while sitting at the old, wooden desk
in the attic overlooking the mountains.

My boyfriend stopped wanting to see me,
the summer before my senior year in high school.
He was headed to the onion fields of Walla Walla.
He never officially ended it,
but instead of the promised puppy,
he gave me a t-shirt for my birthday in July.
The t-shirt was indescript,
a cotton blend, mauve color with a pocket.
I wrote about it.
I read my poems about him
for most of the next year
in our creative writing class.
None of the words were his name,
but everyone knew,
everyone knew my writing was about him.

I feel sympathy for the non-writers.
Those who live in the wordless wasteland.
Those who lock up the pain, joy, and fear
of a yesterday from which they cannot escape.

SHOULDS

We started off
the wrong way.
You were dating
the homely-looking brunette
who worked at the Chevron station.
She often handed me
my 49 cent, 64 ounce Diet Coke
at the drive-thru in the mornings.
With Utah’s bitter winters,
many of the gas stations
have drive-thru windows.
Something I always found odd,
just one more awkward encounter.

After the first time
your stony eyes squinted at me
in Mike’s front yard,
you wouldn’t give up
at the thought of us.
I made the mistake
of borrowing my roommate’s
too-tight, purple, velvet top
to wear to a party at your brother’s house.
It was all over after that.

Her chapstick and hair ties
were on your nightstand
the first time I visited  —
a reminder that I was an intruder.

The Chevron girl
would cruise the streets,
looking for your truck,
and stop if she saw it parked out front,
demanding to be let in —
her heavy feet descending the basement stairs
as we pretended there was no impropriety.

I should have known
it wasn’t a sustainable relationship
when you threatened
to take a bat
to a car window,
because someone had supposedly spoken ill
of your soon to be ex-sister-in-law.
(She was a wretched human!)

Sometimes,
when you’re in too deep,
you have to think just to breathe,
and even when leaving would be best,
it’s envisioned as limb severance.

The day we drove to Vegas,
you told me if we had kids together,
and they ever thought about doing drugs,
you would just explain the various effects
so they would know what they were getting into.
You never learned how to be a parent.
No one ever read Dr. Seuss to you.

As we walked to the chapel that night,
an old man tripped on a crack
in the sidewalk near the hotel,
and I heard his kneecaps shatter
against the pavement.
I was horrified at his pain,
and even more so when you laughed
at his cries.

I should have run then,
taken off my blister-rendering Mary Janes
and acted like it was a barefoot marathon.
I could have jogged through the night,
into the sunrise,
and back to a life less soul-sucking.

ENDLESS SUMMERS

I recall a summer evening,
when I was much younger.
I’d gone to bed
before the darkness had settled;
a hazy shaft of yellow
seeping through the Strawberry Shortcake curtains
in my bedroom.
The cozy of medium time
between sunset and crickets chirping
their chorus into the black
of Utah sky.

During my adolescent years,
I would sit fingers-crossed
waiting for the phone to ring,
“Game on!”
Frequently, weekends especially,
we would play kick-the-can
at the end of VanBuren Street.
There was a stress-mixed-excitement
darting amongst backyards
and peering through bushes.
A tingly fear of being caught.
My lungs filled with crisp air
as I dashed towards the aluminum cylinder
and struck it so it would cling along the pavement.

About age 14,
we would often roll out sleeping bags
on Nancy’s east facing deck
overlooking the expansive green yard,
and just above the “no dump” hill.
After the giggling and chatter
about latest crushes ceased,
the warmth of gray
would lull us to sleep.

Now the bright lights
drown out starry skies
and I rarely hear crickets,
but recollections
bring back a compilation
of my best memories.

MOTIONED TO QUIVER

Originally published in Weber State University’s “Metaphor” 1999

Someone I’ve heard
say things before
is looking for me
somewhere.
I see him in a bluish dark,
smoking a joint
doing a French inhale,
looking like the Lone Ranger
but wanting to be more than alone.

He is spontaneity
and long nights under
foreign covers.
He is the element
of surprise
with a serious face
when he wants to be
hidden.

I am longing for him
and
disguising
myself as his princess
that floated out of a dog’s life,
up from reality
to cloud nine.

It all sounds cliche;
princesses and endless love,
yet he squeezes
my hand so firmly
all these words
come pouring out,
and drop on the petals
of an unwatered flower.