I'd like to write a poem today but the words have shrivelled like the petals of an african violet that some little girl stroked one too many times.
I never could keep african violets alive. They were the only ones.
An acquaintance on his way to conquer the West COast handed me one in a pile of other "plants that need homes". How much has the world changed?
I'd like to grin at my coworkers today and help them laugh their way their first day back in the office since the blackout but there's some thin line of nervous energy lying impenetrable between us.
Since the power went out some light went with it as well, as I sat in the garden naively kissing each individual visible star, visible for the first time since I arrived in this city. Rolling in the grass in the lazy sun, I marvelled at the silence and picked each tomato slowly and carefully because there was no email to race back and check.
Since the hum of electricity burst in on us, bringing hot water and internet connectivity, there's been laughter and nudity and good healthy food and the occasional binges, there's been a carnival and hugs aplenty.
In the melancholy of a monday afternoon wherein I haven't accomplished enough after a week of working fourteen hour days from home and sitting through two hour conference calls which I knew (and hated) the results of before dialing in, I want to blame it on Mars, blame it on the electricity, blame it on the sugar that I had at the CNE that always sets my moods a-flying.
Blame it on stress. Blame it on over-doing it at the gym today. Blame it on the breakthrough handstand in yoga, the breakthrough coloratura in singing class. Wait.
(something's changing I can feel the upswing)
Blame it on the honey bee that watched me pick her tomatoes. Blame it on the squirrels or racoons that have only stolen two vegetables all summer.
Blame it on the perfect dinner last night of every vegetable under the sun. Blame it on the way Dave's long arms wrap so many times around me that the warmth becomes impenetrable.
Blame it on the fact that there is more good in my life than difficulty.
This is an exercise in anti-poetry, there is no angst in my heart right now. Some days I search for it because the hole left behind by perpetual satisfaction is far too similar to those rare mornings where Dave disappears from bed before I do. When the long time lover is missing. The angst has fled my bed and I'm still scouring its pillow with a half-slumbering hand.
Saturday night I cried and said aloud sentences I'd never admitted to the air before, about my father, about a childhood I was sure I'd gotten over by now. Saturday night Dave challenged me gravely and chastised me for not crying more, despite how regular the outbreaks have become. Saturday night he kissed away bruises that I'd forgotten were still pulsing and purple after so many years.
Saturday night he asked me to cry now so that my silence would never drive a wedge between us. Saturday night he used that word again. forever.
(and then we change tacks again)
I would love to write a poem right now, but there is nothing great or heaving wrong in my heart. There is worry about friends and the missing cobbles of their own roads, there is fury at this or that irresponsible colleague, there is the constant hum of "maybe I've said too much" embedded in these padded cubicle walls (nobody ever mentioned that the fastest way to end up in a padded room is to go corporate, the always said this way lay normalcy.).
There's a lot going on. THere's a lot of pain. There's a lot of poetry. The blackout broke something in the city but either too much or not enough, and either way the end result is that there is a new rift for the magic to either flow or dash itself against uneven rocks. Maybe there's enough room that my inner scream will change something. Maybe I'm delusional. Maybe there is poetry after all.
All I know is that I needed ten minutes written barfing time because
it's been a busy day, so many broken brains around me and none of them mine, none of them anything I can fix -- and the things I can fix, no one will let me.
But that's today. Tomorrow I will change the universe and teach it to believe in magic again.
This has been an excercise in teaching my anus to speak.