unfurlings

The poppies are blooming.  The hairy husk falls off and the crepe expands and opens.  They are blowsy and beautiful and then they are gone.  They’re not flowers that you can plant in a careful row.  They don’t open that predictably.  No, these are flowers that must be spread in thick, wild beds so they can bloom and fade individually, en masse.  My bed is about half the size I hope for.  Each year it grows a little thicker, a little wilder.  While it grows at its own pace, I refuse to do anything with that corner of the yard, knowing that any cultivation will disrupt the natural spreading of the flowers.  Consequently, that corner of the yard looks like crap 11 months out of the year.  The possibility of that one month of beauty holds all my faith the rest of the year.

Things other than flowers are slowly growing in their own messy, unpredictable, hesitant manner.  I’m putting my faith in a glorious unfurling.

flowers and feelings

cut roses and lilies

some purple things

a clear vase, squat and round

a card offering forgiveness.

I’m afraid

1. that I’m irreversibly fucking up the kitling
2. that the kitling’s other mother and I will never be amiable
3. that I’m going to end up living in a shithole
4. that I won’t be able to sell the prius for enough to get me another semi-decent vehicle
5. that I’m going to have to declare bankruptcy
6. that declaring bankruptcy will mean that the house is lost
7. that the kitling’s other mother won’t be able to stay in our house and will have to move into a shithole and that the kitling will lose her dogs and her cats and everything she’s had around her her whole life and that this will lead to #1 and it’ll be all my fault
8. that it will tear my heart out to have the kitling have a sibling that I am not a mother to
9. that the kitling’s other mother will have less than a month’s maternity leave and she will resent me for that for the rest of her life.
10. that I will never be safe or secure again
11. that I’ll lose the kitling
12. that no one will ever love me ever again
13. that I’ll always just be the fat, ugly, selfish woman who cheated on her pregnant partner and then couldn’t manage to make things right.  In other words, a monster.

A thousand weeping pieces

The grief is crushing me today.  I just dropped off the kitling to her other mother and I won’t see her until tomorrow.  What I’ve done to the kitling and her other mother is too much to bear today.  Everything is too much to bear today.  It’s all I can do to breathe, and yet it’s a work day.  I have to be “on” today.  I  have to smile.  I have to wait until later to break down into a thousand weeping pieces.

prayers and wishes

In the garden that used to be mine, and that I still own, technically, with the kitling picking “wishing flowers” and enthusiastically blowing them to pieces, I was weeding as a prayer for friendship, while the would-be friend was sleeping.

“It’s a beautiful life, isn’t it mom?” the kitling said as she handed me a wishing flower.  “Blow as hard as you can!”  And I closed my eyes and sent a wish for peace and prosperity and amiability out into the universe with a puff of fluff.  Still, we were working alone in the garden.

“It’s a beautiful life, mom,” the kitling said again, “that has so many wishing flowers in it.”  She handed me another starry dandelion.  “Wish again,” she said.  So I sent the same wish out again.

“You’re right sweetheart.” I said to her.  And I stopped weeding to blow wildflower seeds all over the would-be garden with her until she was done.  I won’t weed alone anymore.

Poppys and Peonies

This morning as I dropped the Kitling off to her other mom, I stopped for a moment in front of one of our huge peony plants ready to burst into bloom.  It was surrounded by dozens of poppy plants also ready to unfurl their color.

It was the peonies that drew us to the house: so many beautiful peony plants gracing the neglected yard with their exuberant vitality.  The house itself was full of promise, but it was that yard, and those peonies that sold us on the house.  Looking at them today I remembered how I felt those heady days when we made our offer and got ready to buy our first (and only?) home together.  How I harvested those blooms I didn’t own yet and took them to my grandfather in the hospital (he’s about to go into the hospital again, will I be able to take him peonies again?).  How many dreams of family and happiness and love we had in those days.  How many of those dreams came true, how many twisted and turned sour.  How we are where we are now.

And the poppies.  Those poppies I’ve nurtured for 4 years now; turned from an improbable, scattered few, into a reliable, thick, thriving bed of crepe-paper loveliness.  Yes, I can plant more.  But will I ever be stable enough again to watch them grow and thrive over the years.

It’s easy to grieve over plants.  Plants are small.

But they hold so much.

Went home today.  Already, even with all my stuff there, it doesn’t feel like my home any longer.  I have no home.

Love Song

Love Song: I and Thou

by Alan Dugan

Nothing is plumb, level, or square:

the studs are bowed, the joists

are shaky by nature, no piece fits

any other piece without a gap

or pinch, and bent nails

dance all over the surfacing

like maggots. By Christ

I am no carpenter. I built

the roof for myself, the walls

for myself, the floors

for myself, and got

hung up in it myself. I

danced with a purple thumb

at this house-warming, drunk

with my prime whiskey: rage.

Oh I spat rage’s nails

into the frame-up of my work:

it held. It settled plumb,

level, solid, square and true

for that great moment. Then

it screamed and went on through,

skewing as wrong the other way.

God damned it. This is hell,

but I planned it, I sawed it,

I nailed it, and I

will live in it until it kills me.

I can nail my left palm

to the left-hand crosspiece but

I can’t do everything myself.

I need a hand to nail the right,

a help, a love, a you, a wife.

Stained

Every year I await the day when the trees in the front yard have leaves large enough to throw shade on the driveway.  This year, I noticed today as I walked down the driveway and felt the lack of sun on my arms.  I looked up at the tender, rusty green products of the Maple’s spring labor and felt only the weight of all those shadows on my skin, face, bones.

Totemic

The dogs began barking the way they do when the raccoon is in the sunroom.  But I looked, first with lights off, the light from the street flooding the sunroom with a pale glow, then with the lights on, and there was nothing in the room.  So I opened the door to step out and get a better view of the front yard.  The dogs pushed past me and dug at a cupboard, flinging the door open to reveal my wild raccoon.  The raccoon pulled itself fully into the corner, and snarled, but the dark dog lunged and grabbed the raccoon by the throat, shaking and tearing.  The lighter dog joined in and I screamed and tried to pull them off it.  Alone I pulled first one dog off, and then the other, but the first returned with no one to help me and the raccoon didn’t get far before being attacked again.  Finally, I pulled both dogs off at once and the raccoon squeezed through the cat door and out into the night, bleeding.

It’s yet to be seen whether or not it survived.  To be sure, it hasn’t returned.