Before The Bees Died

For years and years children rode bicycles
on subdivision roads, past houses while
mothers had book clubs, fathers played in soccer leagues,
and teenage brothers smoked pot in the basement.

We kept up with old friends,
split checks in restaurants,
and threw dinner parties where
we drank wine and ate pesto.

For years we went to therapists.
We went to grad school.
We drove fuel efficient cars
and watched Netflix on the weekends.

Dogs ran around in our backyards.
There were squirrels and birds and trees.

We had dishwashers, washing machines,
sprinklers. We had portable devices- handheld
electronic satellite catchers that gave us
music, that talked to us, that told us where to go
when we were lost.

We immunized our children,
made them eat farmer’s market vegetables and
assumed they would live better, stronger, longer,
that they too would go to therapists
and grad school.

In the summer mothers drank iced non fat
double shot lattes on café sidewalks,
discussed their divorces, their pilates classes
that great new place on 4th street.

In the fall fathers took the kids camping,
put up internet dating ads
and started sleeping with 24-year-olds.

In the spring the sun was hot on our arms,
everywhere new babies were born
and there were flowers.

Season after season. It was perpetual.

If a bee lay dead on a windowsill,
it was scooped up with a paper towel
and thrown into the garbage with the junk mail.
No one even noticed.

shelter

he scooped a place out of the dirt
and with his hands showed me
how warm we'd be there,
just a hole in the ground
with leaves and branches for a roof.
how easy it can all be.

we agreed on kitchen colors,
the benefits of chiropractic
and camping in the snow.
our affair would not be tragic.

he scooped a place out of the dirt
and even though it was 20 degrees outside
his hands were warm.

We will kill it.

We will kill it. We will.
It takes time. It takes work
to curb the stubborn clinging,
the vining between us.
But we will do it.
We starve it.
We overfeed it.
We deprive it of sun
and give it vinegar instead of water.
It takes work. It takes time
but we’re getting there.

Remember when we took pictures of it,
when it was so precious it made us
sick to our stomachs,
like popping uppers.
Hours and hours on the phone,
we gave it a name,
gave it all our breath.

But now we’re killing it.
It's a process, a battle
but we're winning.
Months and months of trying
have made it weak, spindly,
just one stalk stretching towards the sun.
It takes time. It takes work.
We're both tired
but don’t give up.
We’re almost there.

high school

I hold on to my desk
as the world carries its shadow around
like the train on a wedding dress.
It moves quickly.
It moves angrily.
It is loud.
I hear colors and see words shimmy on the overhead.
I see voices and hear the things they are thinking about me.
I am not myself and I am not like them.
The veins on my teacher’s hands know.
The backs of all their necks know.
The cop with his walkie talkie knows.
My crying mother knows.

I don't know anything
but that if I don’t hold on to this desk
I will float away.

I don't know anything yet
about how to hold on. I just know
I don't want to float away.

haiku at 3 am

your leg on my leg
forehead to forehead we are
like a bomb shelter

counting syllables
with my fingers on your back
half asleep poems

wrapping around each
other, safe from satellites
shot out of the sky

nuzzle in and close
the hatch, nail the doors up, wait
for the war to pass

your hand on my thigh
your cheek on my cheek we are
like a bomb shelter

Pilgrim

This grief is smudged on like a tilak
It rolls in my hands like japa beads
This grief makes my skin raw and fragile
Like a saint with a saint’s bleeding feet

This grief on my lips I am chanting
Hare krsna hare krsna all for him
Treading on stones that are glowing
I am hungry I am weak I am thin

On bruised knees for days and days
Relentlessly inch after inch
Away from the devil behind me
Away from his grasp on my wrists

Away from his cheek on my cheek
Breathing in where he’s still on my hands
With every part of me aching
I am a stranger walking in strange lands

Hare krsna hare krsna I love him I love him Hare
krsna hare krsna I am weak at my knees Hare
krsna hare krsna I’m a sorry situation Hare
krsna hare krsna krsna krsna hare hare

This grief is a deity that I pray to
I bathe it with honey and palms
Towards hope I am walking with strangers
I am door to door begging for alms

This grief is my own little Vrindavan
I offer it milk sweets and almond cakes
I am a stranger walking in strange lands
And every part of me aches

Every single part of me aches.

The affair with the tortured author

Like a drunkard
she spends hours in the hall
recalling his awful little stories, his gestures, his carelessness with language. Like a drunkard she stumbles and remembers things in her own way.

Their time had not been altogether a waste
but the point came where it was obvious
so in March she suggested he go already, back to her or wherever, just go.

(This was after months of him complaining about prefixes and suffixes and words he couldn't find and marks he couldn't erase. And he was trying, he said, so please don't be mad. I just need some more time. And it was just sex with her, not love. Just abstract prose.)

And when he said he needed more time she helped him by packing the car with his things, filling it with gas and saying ok, have a good trip, don't call me when you get there. She called him a sorry bastard and a bad writer for good measure.

Since then her own guilt and short stories
would not rule out the possibility that she may have been a bit harsh.

Right as she may have been,
like a drunkard she remembers things in her own way.
In the hall she wonders
about what could have been

had he not been brooding on his inabilities
had she been given to lower hopes
had he not been such a bastard
or at least a halfway decent writer