One Year Ago

Discovery

The husband chooses to spend his Sunday
searching for wreckage from years ago.
The wreck of a wife he has spends her Sunday
wondering why she settles for being left alone.

She can't tell the kids. One of them would not
care, one would worry too much, and one
is just indifferent to the parental drift. The wife
decides to make a beef stew, carefully chops

celery, carrots, onions, garlic, and fresh herbs.
She isn't thinking of the husband much, more
of his elderly mother who will lavish the meal,
lick her lips in gratitude. The wife doesn't know

the husband is out joy-hunting for his lost youth.
She only finds out later, after cooking the meal,
doing three loads of laundry, sweeping dog fur
and beer caps from the kitchen floor, and walking

around in a funk all day, about the fun he had. He
shows her the picture of the car bumper found
in a ditch, laughs uproariously as he tells the story
of the friend who ditched the car after he lost a race

at some small town speedway. The wife just nods
her head and says: So, this is what you did today?
A look of subterfuge clouds his atypically young-looking
59 year old face (the face having been burned

in an accident many years ago which resulted
in what the plastic surgeon said was much like
a surgical peel, the wife the one who tended
to him and made sure he took care of himself

and who made sure he took his meds), and says
"Well, I was just there about an hour. I was working
the rest of the day." The wife knows she has lost
this whole thing--marriage, her once lovely figure,

her young face, her wit, her ability to amuse. She
can do nothing but say, "Really? You were out
today looking for a wrecked car someone chose
to throw in a ditch?" She knows the husband will

never know how she has suffered, what she has fought
for and against, how much ground she loses every
day in her struggle to find some meaning, how much
she really cared about whether the beef stew was meaty

and rich, the taste of fresh herbs invigorating.

On Seeing The Picture I am to the far right, standing with my hands behind me, a half-smile concealing the emptiness. The rest of the nuclear family is contained to my left, my mother's back to me, her beehive hairdo and smart green pantsuit turned toward the others, the siblings...my father. The blue Impala rests itself on the pavement behind us, so many journeys already taken, so few left to take. The smell of Salems fills my senses. It is raining now, so hard my mother sticks her head out the side window in a desperate attempt to give my father direction. My sister is crying in the front seat: I am not sure why. Perhaps to ask the rain to stop or maybe with the hope that the parents will make a truce, call it quits on the fighting, get us safely somewhere. I can't remember. There are too many can't remembers in these long days since my children grew up and left home. The house too quiet, the impulse to make a loud noise which gets reduced to an occasional throwing up of arms, a long stream of expletives that can't mask the loneliness nor the sense of wonder. These posts of pictures from long ago stir things up:a blender full of hate and love, retreat and fight: a container full of mortality.

On Seeing The Picture

On Seeing The Picture I am to the far right, standing with my hands behind me, a half-smile concealing the emptiness. The rest of the nuclear family is contained to my left, my mother's back to me, her beehive hairdo and smart green pantsuit turned toward the others, the siblings...my father. The blue Impala rests itself on the pavement behind us, so many journeys already taken, so few left to take. The smell of Salems fills my senses. It is raining now, so hard my mother sticks her head out the side window in s desperate attempt to give my father direction. My sister is crying in the front seat: I am not sure why. Perhaps to ask the rain to stop or maybe with the hope that the parents will make a truce, call it quits on the fighting, get us safely somewhere. I can't remember. There are too many can't remembers in these long days since my children grew up and left home. The house too quiet, the impulse to make a loud noise which gets reduced to an occasional throwing up of arms,a long stream of expletives that can't mask the loneliness nor the sense of wonder. These posts of pictures from long ago stir things up:a blender full of hate and love, retreat and fight: the brim full of mortality.

Ashes

Ashes to Ashes Scattered across the world, one ocean to the next, what is left of this vibrant young boy is now floating with flotsam and jetsam. His bones burned into eternity enter the waters, dropped from baggies lovingly and with great grief from friends and extended family. In one picture, a man on a pier opens a bag. The look on his face could be labeled: determination, sadness, responsibility. So, there you are, now, my nephew, though your face still looks out at me from the pictures I have on the refrigerator, the ones your mother posts online, the ones I just see in my mind. I do not know where you might be now. I want to believe what I want to believe. You are well, playing, kicking a soccer ball, meeting a girl, falling in love, arguing with your mother about what you should wear to your middle school dance, cutting your face with a razor for the first time, out- growing your clothes in one short season, living the life you will never get to live. To say goodbye is not enough. Anger clouds rational thought. I cannot let it go. Maybe, one day, when I sit in front of the great ocean of choice, I will feel you there in the waves lapping at my exposed toes, energy exponentially filling my aging body with so much joy for having known you.

Gabe's Hands

I am telling anyone out there reading this now that I am wrecked when I see this picture of my nephew's hands, but I think I would have done the same thing if he had been my child. This just absolutely tears me up.  I don't understand many things, but I certainly can't get it right in my mind that children have to die. Oh my. Oh, Porscha. How many nights I think about you and your longing for your son.