If I was your girlfriend...

If I Was Your Girlfriend, by Prince

If I was your girlfriend
Would u remember 2 tell me all the things u forgot
When I was your man?
Hey, when I was your man
If I was your best friend
Would u let me take care of u and do all the things
That only a best friend can
Only best friends can

If I was your girlfriend
If I was your girlfriend

If I was your girlfriend
Would u let me dress u
I mean, help u pick out your clothes
Before we go out
Not that you're helpless
But sometimes, sometimes
Those are the things that bein in loves about
If I was your one and only friend
Would u run 2 me if somebody hurt u
Even if that somebody was me?
Sometimes I trip on how happy we could be
Please

If I was your girlfriend
If I was your girlfriend

Would u let me wash your hair
Could I make u breakfast sometime
Or then, could we just hang out, I mean
Could we go 2 a movie and cry together
Cuz 2 me baby that would be so fine

If I was your girlfriend
Baby can I dress u
I mean, help u pick out your clothes
Before we go out
(if I was your girlfriend)
Listen girl, I aint sayin you're helpless
But sometimes, sometimes
Those are the things that bein in loves about (sugar)

Sugar do u know what Im saying 2 u this evening? (sugar)
Maybe u think Im being
A little self-centered (if I was your girlfriend)
But i, I said I want 2 be (sugar)
All of the things u are 2 me (sugar)
Surely, surely u can see (if I was your girlfriend)
http://www.lyricsfreak.com/p/prince/if+i+was+your+girlfriend_20111378.html

All My Best Quotes For Now....

"My best friend from high school was committed to a mental hospital when she was 18. She always said to me that it is the family that is crazy, the entire family. Of course, only one person can serve the time."

"The main thing I sensed back in my in my childhood was this inexplicable yearning that I could never satisfy," she continues. "Even now at times I experience a terrible loneliness and isolation...Oh God how I remember that feeling though. Sitting on the front steps on a summer night and hearing a lawn mower in the distance and a screen door slamming somewhere. It would actually make my heart ache."
~ article on Jessica Lange, from "Vanity Fair" - March, 1995

You don't get there because, you get there in spite of.
~ Janet Collins, quoted in I Dream a World

It is of immense importance that we laugh at ourselves.
~ Katharine Mansfield, Journals

Most Beautiful
Just Before.
~ Japanese poem

All times are beautiful for those who manage joy within them; but there is no happy or favourable time for those with disconsolate or orphaned souls.
~ Rosalia Castro

The world is wide, and I will not waste my life in friction when it could be turned into momentum.
~ Frances Willard in her journal

Then (she had felt it only this morning) there was the terror; the overwhelming incapacity, one's parents giving it into one's hands, this life, to be lived to the end, to be walked with serenely; there was in the depths of her heart an awful fear. Even now, quite often if Richard had not been there reading the Times, so that she could crouch like a bird and gradually revive, send roaring up that immeasurable delight, rubbing stick to stick, one thing with another, she must have perished. But that young man had killed himself.
~ Mrs.Dalloway, Virginia Woolf

I want to tell him now what no one's ever taught him, how two people who love each other behave, how they avoid damaging each other, but I'm not sure I know.
~ Margaret Atwood - Dancing Girls and Other Stories

She misses him intensely; or rather she misses, not him, but the sensations he used to be able to arouse in her. The light has gone out of him and now she can see him clearly.
~ Margaret Atwood

We love each other, that's true whatever it means, but we aren't good at it; for some it's a talent, for others only an addiction.
~ Atwood

She should never have called him. She should know by now that over is over, that when it says The End at the end of a book it means there isn't any more; which she can never quite believe. The problem is that she's invested so much suffering in him, and she can't shake the notion that so much suffering has to be worth something. Maybe unhappiness is a drug, like any other: you could develop a tolerance to it, and then you'd want more.
~ Atwood

Thinking back on that conversation now, he began to believe that people could, in fact, be used up - could use each other up, could be of no further use to each other and maybe even do harm to each other. He began to think that who you are when you're with somebody may matter more than whether you love her.
~ Ann Tyler

Poetry is nothing more than an intensification or illumination of common objects & everyday events until they shine with their singular nature, until we can experience their power, until we can follow their steps in the dance, until we can discern what parts they play in the Great Order of Love.
~ Tom Robbins

The proof of poetry is its ability to reduce to the essence of a single line the vague philosophy which is floating in all men's minds.
~ James Russell Lowell

Since that time, it seems to me that all my poems - and I write groups of poems rather than singles - are written when I have successfully pulled myself out of a completely numbing despair and I stand again in the sunlight...Poems - even happy ones - emerge from an accumulation of sadness.
~ Alice Walker

He read on. Our children's childern - what of them? Who of them? New means must be discovered to find room for us under the sun. Shall this be done by war or can it be done by peaceful methods?
~ Ernest Hemingway "Banal Story"

Taylor is startled. This ordinary man in jeans whose thoughts she believed she knew opens his mouth and becomes a foreigner. It occurs to her that this one thing about people you can never understand well enough, how entirely inside themselves they are.
~ Barbara Kingsolver - Pigs in Heaven

"Dialogue" by Rosie Thomas

Can you help me figure out all of these things?
I'm restless, I feel reckless
I'm holding on by a string

No, I can't I’m just as broken
I'm just as damaged as you
I'm so tired
I'm uninspired
Half dying in this living room

Oh, where do I go?
Oh, all on my own?

I can't walk in a straight line when
I don't know what I’m heading for
Just keep trying
No more lying to yourself anymore

Oh, where do we go?
Oh, nobody knows

Sweet Dreams of Somewhere Else - Post Script

"If you want sweet dreams, you've got to live a sweet life."
~ Animal Dreams, by Barbara Kingsolver

The week we left for Seattle I let a GI Specialist put a camera down my throat to look at my esophagus and stomach. This out-patient surgery, sandwiched between appointment to close on refinanced mortgage (to lower our payments so we can keep paying for the stupid house that wouldn't sell), and flying across the country seriously stressed me out. Before this medical appointment, I hadn't slept a solid night in days and was starting to gain weight from "not eating properly," instead of losing it, and from not fitting exercise into my schedule.

My former friend, the one who got angry when we couldn't rent to her cuz her landlord wouldn't let her out of her lease, knew about how we were packing for Florida already cuz would only have a few days left in Milwaukee when we got back from Seattle, and how worried I was about this medical procedure. And yet she still had the audacity to write me that she thought I was giving up on the friendship because I could not do the work cuz it was too hard "even when you have almost nothing to do all day."

Afterwards, I kept repeating this comment to myself and sort of laughing. I looked around our bare apartment and wondered, did she think all that furniture sold and moved itself? I know it's probably difficult to understand unless you see it and even then I think it's hard to realize what kind of effort it has taken us to do this. And it's true, we don't know what we are doing, neither one of us has done anything like this before, and don't know anyone else who has truly sold all their things to move to another country.

There are no close-at-hand road-maps or models for what we are doing, we say we are having to make it up as we go along and so far that has been working, I guess. But it's been stressful. And not easy. And I never once, with my non-working schedule, had a day where I thought "hmm, since I'm not working that corporate job any longer, I have a whole day to fill and I have nothing to do! Maybe I'll turn on Oprah." Maybe I should have, maybe I would have been more relaxed along the way?

But just imagine being in the middle of all that crazy moving-muddle and then having an "upper endoscopy" requiring sedation and pretty much a whole day's recuperation. Imagine these out-patient surgery clinics - between the warm socks, & comfy robe they gave me, nice wooden closet to hang my clothes, private bathroom with huge shower, TV to watch and free Wi-fi for my husband waiting for me, I would have sworn I was at a hotel, if not for the medical equipment in the corner, and the RN who came in to take my blood pressure and medical history.

And so weird, the experience of general anesthesia! I felt the effects almost right away and when I told the nurse this she sort of puzzled "hmm, I've only administered the Darvocet" not the second more powerful "juice" as another RN, the one who had put in my IV, called it. Last thing I remember was telling her that was probably cuz I hadn't slept well lately and was tired. Also, before I went to the "land of nod" I asked for a pillow to put between my legs because they had me on my side, the better position for putting the scope down to see why food feels lodged in my throat and why I have this pressure under my left ribs like something is swollen.

I now know that I can never have any non-prescription opiate lest I become immediately addicted, because I loved that drowsy feeling so much, with its sweet promise of sleep and attendant blissful loss of consciousness. I have the fuzziest memory of being rolled back from the GI Lab, when the procedure was over, back to the luxe recovery room where we started, where David waited, and then being transferred from gurney to chair. I've never been able to sleep sitting up (noticeably unlike my father and husband), even when beyond the point of exhaustion, but I was able to that day with the sedatives only slowly leaving my body.

I was feeling a little foggy yet, even when I woke up enuff to watch TV - there was a CNN report on how most of the population is Vitamin D deficient and how we can't get all we need from diet and so need some sun exposure, which was music to my ears, being such a dedicated sun-bather! :) But it was all a little surreal still from those lovely opiates.

So I made David my "advocate" - I said write down these questions for when the doctor comes in, because I might not remember. Cuz I knew the doc would be all rushy-rushy like they almost always are, these days. Even with the list of questions I got not much out of him, just a confirmation that I really need to go on anti-Candida diet (which I still haven't done yet) and a promise to call us once the biopsy results were in.

I hate western medicine. But I also know this: the biopsy results came back - I got the call while waiting at the airport for our flight to Seattle - negative, but even if they hadn't I would still go to this new life. No matter what my health status, I am done with having all this penned-in time and waiting for when it gets a little more peaceful and interesting. I really want a sweet life so I can have sweet dreams. These days, I actually just want to sleep, with or without dreams. So I'll start there.

Sweet Dreams of Somewhere Else

"Sell All My Things" by Rosie Thomas
In a little while I’ll feel better
Gonna travel around the world
Gonna see it all

Gonna go to Paris, maybe Rome
But I’ll feel better miles away from home,
Gotta figure some things out

So sell all my things, I’m not coming home
There's nothing there to keep me there
Just heartache and panic and worries and things that'll bring me down
My head feels much clearer being here

In a little while I’ll feel better
Gonna spill my heart to every stranger in every town
I'll visit castles in Ireland, have some fellas play the
violin and play a song for me

So sell all my things, I’m not coming home
There's nothing there to keep me there
Just heartache and panic and worries and things that'll bring me down
My head feels much clearer being here

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xhWoeFq1ECc
http://www.lyricsmania.com/lyrics/rosie_thomas_lyrics_33698/only_with_laughter_can_you_lyrics_76826/sell_all_my_things_lyrics_762207.html

Going "Home"

Going home to Seattle so soon made me think of another old poem, that I thought I'd share. Funny that I still think of and call it "home" when I haven't lived there in so long and am obviously fully grown, but maybe it helps me to have that, as I begin a period of my life in which I may have no real "home" for a long while. It is scary, but I think I'm ready.

Originally titled "Coming Home from Milwaukee - Winter 1996." Don't really like the title but don't have a new one yet. Suggestions?

Such a sinking feeling
that first winter without him,
realizing the world, the house
the cozy old armchair
empty of my father.

That was the Christmas
of such bad storms in
Seattle that mudslides
sent whole houses crashing
down into water.

And our little lives no less
altered by the severe sweep
of god's arm, how I hated
that old disaster-monger.

Every day taking us further
from summer, deeper into
more subtle shades of sorrow
and slowly forgetting his
delirious surge down the
mountain, for a delicate
collapse: all tiny bones
snapping like twigs in the
forest and god's red kiss
on the skin of his limbs.

Goodbye to his body,
a place where I began,
folded up from the fall, part
of my birth-mystery gone
to the quick catch of heaven with him.

That winter he was irrevocably
gone and yet our ordinary lives
went on, and still this heart heaves
its burden from atrium to ventricle.

Still I felt him in the everyday
unremarkable shadows, from the
periphery of my vision, filling
the tender absence next to my
mother, in the corners of dreams
where the pain continued to be
visceral, like the first moment I
heard the news: a drug ache
in the home of my bones,
a serpentine burn in the most
internal organ, a thunderclap
in my brain, which means
I can never go home
the same way again.

I Am Really Looking Forward to Seeing My Friends in Seattle

Girl-Friends
When we discovered candles
we were teenagers
and just beginning
to play with the fire
of our bodies.

We spoke about it only
tentatively, unable to be anything
but mostly honest about the
boyfriends, those we thought
we might love, and the ones we
merely tolerated, those who
wanted us to be something else,
dressing us up like dolls, drawing us
into their older world, and away
from each other. We talked about
how we resisted or let them
and when we even
enjoyed it.

We sat and talked at cafes that
hated us, because we were so young
and had no money to tip the waitresses
and made a mess of spilled water
and ashes, cellophane wrappers,
and emptied plastic creamer containers
that we strewed about the tables
or stacked one inside the other.

We were altogether unhappily
awkward, with the bangs that
wouldn't grow out or that awful
color, and no one knew us
like we thought we knew each other
our lives burning up so fast
inside us like wild fire.

We complained about our parents
who restricted us, when we were
just dying for that hot
dangerous freedom.

We talked about school,
those days of occasional interest
but largely languid boredom
and what we did last weekend
how we went to to this or that
party or how we missed it, because
of bad directions or wrong address
and the evening was frustrated,
wasted.

But we still had those satisfying
soft summer nights when
we snuck out to meet each other
and there was such a feeling
of uneasy abandon
as we got defiantly drunk
or stoned and were happy
just to be out and together
laughing and forgetting.

We were unsure and temperamental
but rarely fickle or callous with
each other, because this was all we had
in the whole world: the fiery encounters
between our bodies and our boyfriends,
the long, slow school days and our caffeinated
conversation afterward, the sun setting over
far-away mountains on summer evenings
and the immense prospect of our
unimaginable lives before us.

A great song by Natalie Merchant, about being that young -
http://www.azlyrics.com/lyrics/nataliemerchant/tellyourself.html

The Beautiful, The Bizarre and The Awful

A ship in harbor is safe - but that is not what ships are for.
~ John A. Shedd, Salt from My Attic

"But, umm, I don't know, you know, something's, like, crossed over in me and I can't go back, I mean I just couldn't live."
~ Thelma, from the movie "Thelma & Louise"

Life is such a strange combination of beautiful, bizarre and awful that it seems to have forced me awake at 5am on a Sunday morning and I can't figure out what else to do but write about it, so here I am.

It's bizarre to be living in a house with no furniture. It's beautiful to be up early to see the summer sun rise, but bizarre how I can't sleep lately and also am not eating properly. Quitting my job appears to have been a great diet plan, because I finally hit my Weight Watchers "Goal Weight" (hey, I am BMI-compliant for the first time in years! see hyperlink below), will now do 6 weeks of "Maintenance" and then become a "Lifetime Member," at which time I can finally stop paying the monthly fee, which will be great cuz we really can't afford it any longer.
http://www.findmybmi.com/

And I don't get much out of Weight Watchers meetings anymore anyway, since so many attendees apparently eat the highly-processed plastic Weight Watchers "food" that I just can't do, and seem to not know much about organic/natural options. But it was a little bizarre, after years of being overweight, to go to lunch on Friday with a friend who weighs about 80 pounds and be lectured about eating more, as I picked at my chicken ceasar salad.

It's awful to be giving up my cat, but beautiful to feel all this love for him, rising up even more as I let go. It's awful that an ex-boyfriend appeared in my dream last night but I refuse to feel guilty, since I didn't have any control over it! He was actually in a bit part of a play that was being put on in a park in Portland, Oregon which is somewhat bizarre because he is not an actor (so far as I know), and lives in Seattle (again, so far as I know). But it was scary and awful to worry that my husband would see him, realize who the bit-part actor was (still in the dream), and it would trigger feelings of insecurity in him and we'd fight (again). Brings to mind a great song by the LemonHeads - http://www.lyricsmode.com/lyrics/l/lemonheads/bit_part.html

But I think I know why I dreamt it, which is kind of beautiful, how the mind can piece things together, synthesize random thoughts we have during the day into some whole new story we didn't even realize we were capable of telling: the bizarre insight I had about the "work world" while meeting my friend downtown for lunch, that all the people rushing off to their important meetings, and taking themselves and the work so seriously were really just actors on a stage in the most ridiculous and boring play ever. (No offense to any old co-workers reading this, but I just found most of it really boring.) I probably also dreamt it cuz I've had the song "Endless Love" on a loop in my head ever since my last post, and that's a song I associate with my beautiful-and-awful first love.

It's beautiful that I get to go to Seattle in August and all the siblings will be in town at the same time, to celebrate my mother's 65th birthday. But it's awful that David and I have about five business days to set up a whole new relationship with a property management company IF we don't go with renting to a friend who can only take the place in September if she can sub-lease her current apartment, an iffy prospect in what looks like a bad rental market.

And it's a bit bizarre and awful how this has changed our friendship already, is causing tensions I should have foreseen but didn't or thought we could rise above, if they happened. But to be more honest, there's tensions also because I've been giving her and her boyfriend WAY too much advice about their relationship, because I think I "know" something, because David and I did so much couples-counseling in the past.

I think there's a quote that I, of course, can't locate now, about how that's one of the most dangerous things: someone who thinks they know something. Someone who is so sure, and therefore a little bit blinded to those pieces of information she is missing for a decent view of the "whole picture." (See my other post "Robert S. McNamara's Death and The Evil of War" and maybe I should take my own advice huh?)

When I get too excited about sharing my "widsom" I sometimes cross boundaries and step on toes and this is maybe also why I'm up with anxiety at 5am, because I have to fix things with her today, as well as give away my cat. Oh my god, this is hard, have I mentioned that yet?

But David and I are still full-steam ahead with this project and we will get there, one way or another. Because in fact, when asked the question would I really turn this ship around now (if I even could), my reply was that it feels like there is no "there" to return to, it's been obliterated for me somehow. And so I keep thinking of that Thelma & Louise quote, which doesn't mean we are driving off a cliff, don't worry! Although it certainly feels like we are some days, and with weightier decisions like who the hell is going to rent from us in September, and how we'll manage the property long-distance.

I just have to believe that something is going to work out for us, but it's so awful not knowing what that will be exactly...and so I'm dwelling on the beautiful, the bizarre and the awful and it's still not even 7am, too early to wake my husband for him to distract me from my crazy thoughts, this monkey-mind that is acting up a lot lately. So maybe it's OK for me to stop being all intense and angst-ridden and go do something mundane like make a pot of coffee and sit on our balcony to listen to the birds' cacophony. Which is kind of beautiful actually. :)

Lots More Lessons in Letting Go....

So, there was saying goodbye to the dining room table, already amply documented here. Then in the same weekend, we sold that damn Tempur-Pedic mattress I never should have spent so much money on, to a nice couple who drove all the way down from Appleton. We made them really happy - they have two kids, said they were both laid off, that "this is really all we can pay, sorry," and how the husband needs it for his bad back.

I was glad to help them and make a little money back, in the process. But selling the mattress meant we could sell the bedroom set (headboard, bed-stand and bureau). That was hard, cuz we're talking Amish-made heirloom-quality furniture we didn't even have that long, which we thought we'd keep to our deaths, the one thing we considered putting into storage, till we decided we want to be free even more than we want to hang onto it. Yes, there's also a photo of me hugging the headboard with tears in my eyes, but I'll spare my loyal readers from seeing that.

And this coming weekend I will let go of Colby, my little orange tabby cat, that we are giving to my meditation teacher, Kathie. I am so happy to have found him such a good home. I love that she not only does meditation classes but also psychotherapy, and so my husband and I have this half-joking/half-serious hope that she will be so soothing and therapeutic to be around that she will help him overcome what we figure is his PTSD (Post-Traumatic-Stress-Disorder, see hyperlink below) from living on the streets. He was a rescue cat and has a story to tell from that but doesn't have language, only speaks with his strange little meeps and hiding under our bed (before we sold it), or in closets when strangers come to the house.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/PTSD

I know that everyone who loves her cat probably sez this, but I honestly think he is the sweetest feline I have ever met. He looks up at us with these big eyes, as if we have all the answers and he's only waiting to be told them. I have loved how he always heads to the bathroom, to make a bed of the rug, and is there anytime we go to the toilet, head-butting us to prompt our affection. I often felt guilty when home from work and too tired to engage his still-kittenish play. I can't even say for certain that I've played with him more since we've been here during the work day (and I'm neglecting him right now to write this post), but I have been trying to pay him more attention, as our time together comes to an end.

I emailed his expectant new owner, when she asked after him: "Colby is great! He's right here next to me as I write this...I am enjoying him all the more, knowing how soon we will give him up. But I'm so glad to have found such a good home, and I really think you are going to love him, he's got such a great personality. I call him the 'cat-love-of-my-life' which is saying a lot, since I had a pretty terrific cat from the age of 7 to 14."

That cat, the one that no other could live up to (until Colby), was called Tiger. I got him at 7 yrs old because someone up the street had kittens - I carried him home in my arms and begged my Dad until he let me keep him. Later it was a toss-up which one of us loved that cat more. As the first domestic pet to enter my childhood home, we had no idea what to do with him and fed him milk (my father's old-fashioned idea of what a cat would eat), until he got the runs and we figured out he needed kitty-chow instead.

Tiger (unlike Colby) was an outdoor cat, and would sun himself in the alley with no inhibitions, as if dangerous cars simply didn't exist in his universe. This cat would greet anybody who came by with full-on love and acceptance, if you would pet him, you were in.

This cat would curl at my feet under the covers when I slept and climbed on my chest when I needed him; I called him my first boyfriend and meant it. He was my first cat-love (cue the "Endless Love" lyrics - http://www.lyricsfreak.com/l/lionel+richie/endless+love_20083832.html).

And when he was hit by some driver in the street outside our house, while I was sleeping a 14-year-old sleep, dreaming, no doubt, of the terrifyingly large public high school I had just started attending (after years of small private Catholic school), my Dad dealt with it. He had Tiger put to sleep because he was just too hurt to survive. And when my Dad told me the next day, it was one of only a few times I've seen him cry. I'll bet that was really hard for him, but he did it.

And yes, as the cheesy song "Endless Love" suggests, there's nothing like the first. But just as my husband has supplanted all prior loves, Colby stole my heart from the first little meep and it's hard, hard, hard to give him up. But I will, only because I see the faint prospect of freedom, with little to no burdens, glimmering on the horizon like a beautiful Seattle sunset. And there's no end to the big adventure I'm going to have with my husband, my last love, and I have to believe that it's worth it.

I Don't Want to Think That Love is Like War

i don't think war is noble
and i don't like to think love is like war
but i got a big hot cherry bomb, and i want to slip it through the mail slot
of your front door
~ Ani Difranco "Independence Day"
(for full lyrics see http://www.danah.org/Ani/LittlePlasticCastle/IndependenceDay.html)

I wrote the below poem before I was married to my husband. We were living together and unfortunately still solidly mired in what is called the "Power & Control" phase of the relationship. I can't for the life of me locate this theory of relationships I am referring to, but it basically delineates three phases: Honeymoon, Power & Control, and Acceptance. I don't believe any couple, no matter how truly happy, gets completely and permanently beyond Power & Control - it's more like even if you do work hard enough to get to the Acceptance phase, you still circle back to the miserable middle part, with any less than completely mature argument. But maybe I should just speak for my own relationship and not generalize?

Well, with the upheaval of selling all our things and trying so hard to get to the "soft life" we desire, we are circling back to Power & Control a lot lately and fighting more - quite a bit more. Picture your biggest, worst move, and then double it in terms of stress, anxiety and uncertainty. We still don't know for sure who our tenant will be in September, although at least we've decided to just rent our unit so we can still go.

The house is such a wreck, with things in boxes and suitcases everywhere, that I'm surprised the cat isn't completely freaking out yet (he goes to his new home this coming weekend - ouch - my heart, but that will be another post). This morning I had a strong reaction ("you did what?!") to the fact that David had already given away our whisk, but then I just used a fork to beat the eggs for breakfast and got over it. But, that was one of my/our better moments, and not exactly typical of what's been going on between us recently.

I'm told that fighting under this kind of stress is completely normal, only to be expected, but I still hate it so much. It just wrenches my psyche, when there is bad feeling between us, and makes me feel like all is wrong in the world. Which is probably related to some co-dependence in me and the relationship, the need for stronger boundaries, and more work I have to do in therapy, blah blah blah but for now it still sucks.

So when a thundershower woke me at 3am last week, and I couldn't get back to sleep - and couldn't cuddle up to David even if he wasn't on the couch that evening, because we're sleeping on this crazy uneven configuration of twin mattress and box spring on the floor, since we sold our bed - I got out my writing file (which I'm supposed to be downsizing, as we speak), and unearthed this poem from long ago. I love being married to this man, but it's really hard sometimes you know?


There are places in each other
that we can never touch.

Lying next to him
among the white sheets
and plump pillow cases
where we love,
I place one hand
on the white skin
where the shirt achingly
pulls up
and look at him, little-boy-like
deep in his afternoon of sleep
face flushed and comforted
some sweet peach vision
taking shape beneath his eyelids.

There are moments with each other
that it seems we can never overcome.

Standing next to him
among clenched fists
and crossed arms on the balcony
where we battle,
I forget the sweetness
and see only ages of combat
and strange back streets
where dark things slink
around corners,
when the gorgeous
enormous language
we use, becomes booted
and repulsive -
wiping mud on the sheets
where elegant lust
turns to a brutish club.

These particular nights
and early morning hours
when the blood runs
there's a swift blade to
separate us - it hangs
in the balance of our
angry words and we
are both just begging
to have it be done.

These two sad goats
butting heads
and bleating at the sun
are nothing like
our puppy love
our licking and sniffing
and protecting each other,
when we can lay down
at each others' feet
with a big sigh
after another long day's run.