Half Away

I opened the door, and there it was, the moon full overhead carefully framed by all the buildings and street lights.
I stood there, staring straight up into the sky, feeling the cold creep over my skin and the light cover my face
And I wanted to weep.
Like a temperamental flower I seek the warmth and sun and long gentle days of early summer.
The crazy blackness in my head makes the night seem so frightening that I can't bear witness to it anymore.
But then, at that moment, the full moon was so breathtaking and the cold so bracing and all the blackness gave way.
I didn't realize how empty the days are without the night sky. I've forgotten the moon lit musings.
I can't find the poetry in the daylight - I think I need too much.
I can't find the moon often enough in these circumstances
And so I suppose I must change.

Confrontation

I told someone again. I used words that I wrote years ago because I've lost the connection and my current thoughts are all jumbled up.
I used the old words. It hurt.
I suppose that's the root the bottom the end the beginning the tangled web of then and now - the hurt.
I thought it was gone. Maybe it was, for awhile.
It's a thing that's never buried, never over, never gone, no matter how much I wish it away
Or lock it up
Or hide behind the daily tasks of life
And in that place of truth I am
Despaired.
How often the things we want are stripped away to our basic need
I hold on so tight and it hurts;
The jagged edges of life are uninspiring, even ugly;
Confronted, I am turning away.
Until I tell again. Using words from so long ago because I've lost the connection and my current state is so full of suffering.
Because I cannot hide, I cannot bear up under the weight of these expectations.
In the lies of my despair I cannot rephrase or remain silent.
I am absolutely certain that I am being taken over and that I am being found,
Bloodied.
It hurts.

Lacking a Proper Goodbye

Do you remember the day you stood in the fast food parking lot and yelled "Why can't you just go out and have fun anymore?"
The answer, we both knew, was the scary future in front of us. College years, and miles apart, and endless pressure to find the way forward, and most of all my starving mother.
I know we talked frequently after this moment in time. Letters and phone calls, before the prevalence of email.
I know you prayed for me, entreated me, yelled at me, loved me in your way.
Until neither of us could keep up with the emotions anymore and we just
Stopped.
In spite of all the things that came after my heart remembers this moment of sundering, in that fast food parking lot, when you yelled at me for crying on a Friday night double date.

I remember when I called to tell you my mother was going, almost gone, and broke the months long silence, hoping your voice would bring her a measure of peace.
Loose ends. That's what we had become.
It's what we have remained.
I never would have expected this outcome, but I have an enormous amount of patience for it.
We were all so young, and selfish, and lost.
Older now, I understand how often ends are left undone in this lifetime.
I still remember, though. I would like to ask if you remember, too.

Challenging Things

I have let go of all of this, or I thought I had, and now it is swirling all around me in a dizzying display of light, trying to lure me in, telling lies.
I am determined to keep my hands open, to turn away towards the truth, to finally be divested and free.
It is so much harder than I had expected.
The steps forward are mounting and taken in full they are overwhelming.
I made a promise.
I've lied to myself over and over, cursed my own deceit. I have created whole fictions from kernels of reality until I can't tell the difference for myself anymore.
Until the puppetry falls to the floor and the disaster is revealed.
The truth is like the wind, teasing and pulling, capable of more than I can imagine
But for now I'm stuck in the light of these lies, waiting for them to torment someone else willing to pick them up and carry them forward.

Gone

I don't try to wash you off my skin anymore, I've shed so many layers since I saw you last I am nearly unrecognizable.
I've replaced your possession with peaceful surrender to one who treasures the gift and gives back a treasure.
You don't know me anymore and you never really did and I've forgotten your name.

It's all become some sort of dream that I wouldn't wish on anyone with all the details mixed up and filled in from fiction.
This disconnect from reality has led me to believe I must be wrong.
Until I reconnect my reality and know that the details don't matter in my reckoning because
You don't know me anymore and you never really did and I've forgotten your name.

The parts of me you stole away have been gone so long I don't even mourn them anymore.
I want to shout into your ears that I've forgiven myself and I've learned how to sleep at night, most of the time, and the wakefulness has nothing to do with you.
I finally spoke the truth and the lie and the meanings are lost; I won't seek it, I won't hate anymore, I won't hold on so tight.
You don't know me anymore and you never really did and I've forgotten your name.

I am so much more than I used to be. I am triumphant and beautiful and kind.
I will love the person I was and the one I became and the one I am becoming and I will learn to live with this as a part of my truth and my experience.
I have replaced you. I have forgotten your name.

Fractures

I heard the car go by and looked towards the window, trained to respond, as though identifying some kind of threat.
I can hear - the wind in the trees / the crickets singing in the night / the train going by in the distance / the trucks passing by on the highway / the cat jumping away from the table / the dog snoring on the couch / the flag rustling outside the door / the car parking down the street.
The bottle is cold and damp in my hand, heavy, and the label is wrinkled.
The breeze through the window, augmented by the fan above, cools my skin near to discomfort.

There were words I wanted to rearrange
Overwhelmed.
Interrupted.
Lost.

Honesty

And if I had a vision, it's been lost amidst the detritus of this acceptable life I lead.
Chased away as I trip in the darkness over the forgotten toy, fold one more clean shirt, listen with only a fraction of my attention, engage a limited portion of my intellect.
The doubting voice believes that there was no vision, this is my attention, I've overstated my intellect.
But in the end it doesn't really matter which voice is right because my deepest heart yearns for something different from this absence.

I cannot abide creating falsely dramatic situations in such a broken and harsh world.
I bleed over injustice, cry over tragedy, love over greatness, pray over it all and then hide under the bed when the storm comes, patiently waiting for it to pass.
Because in the end, my deepest heart yearns for something magnificent.

I am not beautiful and cannot submit myself to tragedy and will not deny the truth of my place.
But I think, once, I had a vision.

Things I Would Like to Say

If I could tell you anything right now it would be that I love you still
And
Always
Forever until I come to my end and
Still even then, I will be in love.

In this darkness this love is a beacon,
It is a drumbeat,
It is a call to the dawn
And it echoes in my head, competing with all the chaos.

If I could tell you anything right now it would be how much I treasure you
For constantly forgiving,
Trusting,
Loving me
Through.

In this darkness this forgiveness is a blessing,
It is a balm,
It is a respite from my own self
And it echoes in my soul, competing with all the stillness.

If I could tell you anything right now it would be that I am so afraid of losing my way,
Of being lost in this waiting place,
And that I do not think I can give you what you need.

In this darkness this fear is crippling.

We've walked a  long journey together and each step has been an adventure
Feeling heartbreak over joy, sensing loss among the gains, seeing an end at every beginning
And all those things in the small spaces between all the big buildings.
So many things change and so many stay the same and the only true constant above it all is how deeply in love I am.

Mom's Obituary, redone

It's been sixteen years since Mom died. Today I was reading her obituary and found I wanted to update it to reflect these last years. Since there really isn't any other place to appropriately share this, I figured I'd throw it here. 

Deborah Lynne Mennemeyer
March 11, 1952 - July 16, 1997
Beloved wife of Larry E., dear mother of Mary, Elizabeth, Linda and Thomas, mother in law of John, Marc, and Matthew, grandmother of Arianna, William, Xavier, Oliver, Nora and Lucas, dear daughter of the late Charles and the late Zelda Jenkins Crider (nee Woodham). Our wife, mother, grandmother, sister in law, daugher in law, neice aunt, cousin and friend. She loved and was loved immensely and the loss is profound.

Sixteen years. 

Storms

My mind is filled with all the things I've yet to do
And all the things that need to be done
And the chaos of it all surrounds me
Until the level of noise drives me to distraction
So I burst out with some small accomplishment,
Like bailing my boat with a thimble
I am tossed around the storms of my own thoughts
Lost.

There are so many words damned up inside
My thoughts have become incomprehensible
And when I tell you that I'm struggling a bit right now,
I mean that I am
Drowning.

I've become so certain that I am screaming
And so sure this is a broken whisper
And I don't know where to go with this anymore
I mean that I am almost
Gone.

Lost. Hidden. Missing.
While walking around and
Folding the laundry
Mowing the lawn
Cooking dinner
Pouring milk
Weeping dye eyed
Screaming and whispering and holding on
For all that this is worth it
Or will be, if I can find the way out.

In my heart I believe there is a way
I've seen it before when the skies were clear
And the storms forgiving
And I don't know how long
All of you can wait for me
But I pray that it is forever
Or that you'll go on without me
Finding your own way so that I am free and bound.

A Proper Order to Things

I started taking some words and moving them around in my head, and found something I wanted to say.
The silence has been echoing loudly for awhile now and the noise was such a welcome balm to this chaotic mind.
I trusted all those words to a page, spinning it out as I rode the wave of purpose, taking the words out of my head as quickly as they formed into thoughts, shouting to the world outside myself that somewhere, I still exist.
I was in the middle of this experience when the page caught fire and burned away to ash faster than I could comprehend, fast enough to burn my fingers and scorch my heart.
I had forgotten, again, what a relief it is to let go of all those words,
How soothing it is to say a momentary goodbye to the clutter caught up inside.
But then it was gone forever and I've lost a piece of myself.
I've scattered bits all over my time, pages covered in strings of thoughts hidden in books, the bottom of drawers, behind important things.
To gather them up would be an insurmountable task - once I've put them down they are no longer mine.
When things go as planned, and the words are finished, and the papers are lovingly set aside and all those pieces become an echo of a moment in my time.
But then it was gone forever and I'm overwhelmed by the loss.