I make it home at ten past six

And I fall into the cotton and linen

Wrapping myself in the scent of you

I lay on my side of the bed, curled up

And place my palm where you should be lying

But work called you away and I lie there texting you

You apologize for not having made the bed before you left

I look at the crumpled sheets around me

Evidence that we loved here

Lived here

Dreamed here, together

Darling, the bed isn’t made until you are in it with me

Come back to bed

Come home

I won’t read all the books that line the shelves of the world’s libraries

I won’t see all the places whose names I have jotted down in my heart's itinerary

I won’t experience three fourths of half the things I hope to taste, smell, touch, hear, see

I find my corner of the earth holds beauties like all other corners do in its own right

It holds an untapped potential of memories to fill a beautiful and happy lifetime

It is worth walking through, taking it all in as if I were a stranger to the land

But the longing will never leave my soul for the distant nooks and crannies I will never explore

For the spices my tongue will never savor and books whose binding will remain closed to me

For the scents that will never drift under my nose and bury themselves in my memory

That I might recall them when my legs are spent but my words still run towards listening ears

And I will still find the names of all those unseen places rolling around in my heart

Much like the groceries in the trunk of my car on the way back from the familiar grocery store

I love home with its doors and windows, gateways to my favorites faces

And rooms with drawers full of the seen and touched and heard and cherished

But a part of my soul will always wander the streets of pending adventures

And will wonder what would happen if I had enough time to follow it down to the end

You seem to be my focal point

The sun right in the center of it all

Or maybe it's you who spins in circles

And I stand in the middle pulling you in

I'm not sure who is orbiting who

Or maybe we are orbiting each other

But I'm glad that I found you

Out of all the people

I'm glad it was you

I can’t remember all the things I have forgotten

They are buried in my mind under piles of facts and fiction

Those lost moments

Parts of my life that shaped me, made me who I am

But cannot be recollected

And I wonder if that’s how it goes

All the lost things propel us forward

Into the new

I can’t remember building it

But all those misplaced memories

Lay stacked in the back of my mind

Like a decaying staircase

Which I ascended into

Today, Tomorrow, the future

And leave behind the Neverland of lost time

The faded shapes and lines

The echo of smiles and tears

The memories I once made

I can’t make all of it out anymore

Those faded moments

That lost child

That grew up and forgot

I live inside the Plan it Planet

Every minute marked upon a calendar

Appointments to work

Appointments to eat

Appointments to remember to live...

So busy planning that sometimes we forget to ACTUALLY live

And whether we're catching up over coffee

Or depositing a check at the bank

Or picking out a movie to entertain us on a Saturday night

We plan it

And I often think to myself

I miss those spontaneous moments

Those unplanned minutes of pure us

But find myself making plans for us anyway

It's what I do and I can't seem to help it

Like plans to be together for just over the horizon into forever

Plans to have you and hold you and keep you

And then I remember how much I LOVE to make plans

So, Lover, can I just have your whole day?

This whole life with you?

Jot me down on all the squares and rectangles

Monday through Friday

Pencil it in everyday of the years that go by

And I'll show up to all of them

I promise you this

I'll be there waiting for you just like we planned it

Whether I meet you for dinner after work

Or I meet you in bed after a long day without you

Because there is no one on this planet

That I want to make plans with more than with you

Not every memory is bad

And I tell myself this when it all becomes too much

The remembering

The reminiscence of time gone by that branded me

The abused one

And it gets me through when I'm in fetal position

Staring out over the balcony into this new world

Where I'm to be the adult that was never modeled

I think about these moments and revisit them

A constant redemption when I feel life is too ugly

I remember pinky kisses, finger to finger

And kisses sent via air mail

Dodging them with giggles

But knowing full well I can't evade them

He told me so himself

He said it always finds its way to my cheek

Where it plants itself and grows

Never to be rubbed away or uprooted

And I loved that notion

If only his roots grew just as deep

And it would have been harder for him to leave

I remember his Donald Duck voice

and playing Trouble on the living room carpet

He would read the newspaper and sing to me

"Doctor, Doctor, Give me the news

I've gotta bad case for loving you."

And I would laugh and think he was talking to me

and the news was that I loved him too

And he was waiting to hear it

And I would never disappoint him

I remember his work room in the basement

Where he would often sleep after an hour of raised voices

And I worried he would be cold down there

So I would bring him extra blankets from the couch

And I'd sit on his bench as he carved wooden birds

Which I'd cradle in my arms, so proud of the detail

And of my father the artist, the creator of beautiful things

On the occasions when he wasn't creating fear in my heart

As for her

I remember purposefully avoiding sleep

Creeping down the steps with excuses of bad dreams

So I could curl up next to her on the couch

and watch Dateline NBC with a glass of milk

and her famous cream cheese sandwich

And as they worked out the mysteries of the world

I worked out how this must be the definition of love

The perfect recipe for a goodnight's rest

and an excuse to get more forehead kisses

the kind you can still feel as you drift off to sleep

I recall walking through the sliding doors

somewhere in a big rural warehouse

and being greeted with the soft peeps

and the smell of pine wood chips

We grabbed a cardboard box

picking out ten chicks to take home

And I kept thinking how lucky I was

That she indulged us in responsibility and fuzzy friends

She understood how important it was

Or perhaps they were to appease her own guilt

For hardly spending time with us

I feel the need to remember all this

The things that made them human

Those bits of thawed heart that hadn't succumbed to the freeze

Instead of only remembering the monster's I see in fits of sleep

when I feel like they might have found me

I remember the good things

And try to understand how those hands that built me

Became the ones that tried to deconstruct my pieces

And I can't ever get to the knowing part

Only the part that continues to seek out the good

I have to know that there is something worth keeping

Even when most of it rotted through to the center

I have to believe there is good in everyone

Even if it didn't win

I push the cart down the aisle

Fighting with the wobbly wheel

Too determined to switch out baskets

I just came in for a few things

And as I read labels, tags and nutrition

And look at all my options

I realize it either hurts me or it hurts them

And I get so tired of having to choose

And isn't that how it goes?

We have to choose in life

Them or Us

Me or You

As if there weren't enough to go around

As if shortage wasn't due to misuse of resources

or words, or time, or ideas

As if only some of us matter

Its either them or you

But I want us all to make it

I don't want to be a part of the human race

Not anymore

Because winning requires a means

With which my conscience cannot grapple

And being on top gives only a view

Of everything you cut down to get there

It is rare to find permanence these days. People are constantly coming and going, starting and ending, loving and losing. It is even rarer, it seems, for there to be answers of why going and ending and losing must happen at all. Of course, sometimes it’s a good thing, but I feel like having some closure would make the ending a little less painful. I wish I could know the minute it happened, when I reached the defining moment…When I lost. Because saying goodbye always feels like losing for me. But since life does not like to inform me of its plans, I move on and carry those questions of “why” and “how” with me everywhere I go.

This weekend I am moving to a new apartment, a new home in a string of many across the years. During these moves, those lingering questions seem to come to my mind more during transition periods than any other time in my life. Each box I pack, each item I store, brings me closer to another chapter ending, another goodbye. One box, in particular, that I have is a black one that I have been carrying around with me for about ten years now. And not long after I bought it, I lost the keys. Each time I move, this box goes with me from apartment to house to apartment, year after year. To explain its origin a little better, it is a small safe that I bought at a time before I was old enough to open a checking account. I wanted to protect my small allowance and the meager wages I would get for teaching piano each week. I don’t believe there’s anything too valuable in it anymore, since I would assume that I would have been more determined to open it back then had there been money still in it at the time the keys vanished. I’ve kept it all this time just in case, telling myself that I’ll get around to figuring out how to open it someday. It’s a small but very heavy box that frustrates me more and more with each move, and promises are always created to make opening it more of a priority so I can be done with the thing. It’s seems a pointless piece of weighted mystery of which I can’t seem to let go. Even if I wanted to dispose of it, I am not sure where I would recycle or donate it, since it has no key and I have no idea what is inside of it. I don’t want to take the risk of tossing it when there is a chance it contains something valuable.

Each time I move I see this box that has been a spectator through so much of my life and feel a tinge of resentment. It has been an eavesdropper to all of my late night phone calls, my private rants to myself, midnight tear fests. It has heard the hurtful words I regret and the apologies I have thrown over the wounds I’ve caused. It has seen my heart break while on the receiving end of hurtful words and deep cuts. It has been a bystander, sitting on the shelf and seeming to bide its time, waiting for me to remember it. Sometimes I wonder if what’s hiding beneath its contents is something I’ve been looking for all these years. Perhaps it has seen so much of my life that it could tell me where things went wrong. Perhaps that is why it has waited so patiently all this time. It’s been silently collecting conversation across my life that if only I could find the keys, I could figure out what it was that caused the crash of so many of my hopes and so much of what I held dear. Maybe it could tell me why life chose me to hurt in such ways. Perhaps this black box has been the hiding place of answers to all those questions I’ve carried around with it from home to home (but never really a home), questions of why and where my life seemed to fall apart.

So each time I pack, I go through my bags and drawers hoping I will find the keys to this black box of mine. But at the same time, I’m much too afraid to find them. And perhaps that is why I haven’t tried too hard to get it open over the years. Because the thought of this box being as empty as I sometimes feel, that would be unbearable. I would rather leave it as it is, an untapped potential of hope. So I look at it sometimes and wonder what is in it as I throw it in among my moving boxes. Maybe it will have the answers, maybe it contains what a young girl once held dear to her heart and needed to protect, or maybe …maybe it just contains dark and empty space. 

The world is against itself

One hand is ripping off limbs

While the other desperately tries to sew together

The gaping holes with threads of humanity

And I stare at my television screen

And read articles on the internet

My own wars waging within my chest

Between feeling helplessly outnumbered

And feeling determined to make myself count

We can win this war waged on Love, I know it

There is no other choice going forward

That allows us all to live with the consequences

Every single life matters in this world

But some are being assaulted more than others

So if you aren’t lying on the ground

Or running desperately for cover

In this rainfall of bullets, hate, and oppression

Then I beg you to give a damn

Please, please care…I beg you