liver and onions

On a day like today, I finally make you liver and onions,  

a dish you’ve craved for months but I hate.

I nervously try to make it for the first time,  

and you smile, saying it’s not quite like your mom’s.  

No wife can match the dead matriarch’s touch,  

but I’m relieved I didn’t ruin it.  

Your smile reassures me,  

so I say, "It’s nice," and promise to make it again—  

while swallowing without chewing,  

because I can’t quite bring myself to like it.  

I think to myself 'I need the iron,' so I keep going,  

forcing it down as if it’s something I owe my body,  

but also something I owe you to try.

We talk about earlier, how you took down 

a bird’s nest from the garage,  

we marveled at how perfect and beautiful it was,  

vowing that, should the birds rebuild,  

we’d let them stay.  

And for a moment, we suddenly hugged—

a welcomed dining room apology. 

It was just two days ago I cried so hard and long

my salty tears left my face raw.

I’ll wear make-up tomorrow for work—

because you said you wanted to end our home too.

Please know, if we were two birds, 

I'd be already out gathering more twigs 

for the rebuild and even live in a nest

made of liver and onions if it kept you 

you don't know what this means to me

How casually, angrily, you cast out

the idea, as if life without you—

for me—

is as simple as grabbing my purse, my coat,

and walking out the door.

Don't you know that life without you mean

my career becomes paycheck to paycheck,

my dinners nothing but bread and a slice of cold cheese,

a bed reduced to just a mattress on the floor,

a home just a one-bedroom apartment,

where the only thing left to do is cry alone?

Don't you know what life without you means to me?

clueless

Forgive me, dear, for I cannot know,
You've cracked the door, just a sliver, aglow.
I've seen the foyer, but not stepped through,
Allowing me believe that’s all that's true.

useless

I try my hardest to see the bright side,

But your crippling sadness fills every room.

Sorry, I'm too young, with too much life ahead—

But didn’t you know that before we began?

You said Indiana was the problem, so we left.

Now it's Alabama, and we could move again.

But will Nevada, New Mexico, or Florida,

Or even the moon, really change what I am,

Or how you are endlessly unsatisfied?

a wrinkle in time written on the lawn

"If wrinkles must be written upon our brows, let them not be written upon the heart. The spirit should not grow old."

James A Garfield

Would you understand what I meant,
if I said I wish I were the type of person
who planned to overseed the lawn
this weekend? Could I be that person,
knowing at least seven people still cast me
as the villain in their life? Does it
still matter, if they wouldn’t recognize
me now—having grown into a middle-aged
woman’s body, no longer wearing youthful
clothes? Do you know if the neighbors see
the bare patches on my lawn and hate me too?

God, what is left,
when all you've done
is still written on your face?

tired since the 90's

tip top      /        tip toe      

          just the tip

            tip her,

            tipper   

   like Tipper Gore   

   not Tupperware   

  hooking pinkies  

like feminine despair.

3 a.m.

gun in pocket

hardwood plod

screen door swingin'

put on a jacket

it's cold outside.