I would believe him

I would believe him

if he says

'I don't remember'

because who

remembers

every

      curiosity satisfied

      strength exerted

      small pleasure taken

      destructive act towards another

our brains 

do not 

work that way

I surely do not

remember, but

I hope 

      that I am wise enough to know

            that what I do or do not

                  remember does not change

                  what did or did not happen

                  to anyone else

      that when someone says

'you hurt me when you did this'

      that I will be humble enough and strong enough to remember and say

'I am sorry I did that to you.'

Can you forgive me? What

can I do 

for you 

to atone?'

      that I will not lash out

      that in the hot moment of shame

            when accused of wrongdoing

            I will not lie

            by saying it didn't happen

            simply because 

            I don't remember

as if I believed 

that what I remember

could possibly 

change reality

I don't believe that someone

who does not know this truth

of how the mind works,

      that what we remember is not reality,

should be given

power over others

to abuse

nest full of petals

nest full of petals
overwhelming loneliness
memories of birth

when I forget fall

I'm glad, Brother Wolf:

you will remember for me

when I forget fall.

nostalgia or eyeball floaters

was the sky

a clearer blue

when I was 

young, or could 

it just be that 

there are 

more floaters

in my eyes now

that I am older

?

first tree frog fairy sighting

Yesterday was the first day
I spotted a tree frog  clinging
to the third story window.

I was afraid they were not
coming this year, since I
had not seen any in June.

Maybe they come this late
every year with the cicadas,

and, like everything else
these days, I just forgot.

It's good to see them again
this year always every time.

on a beautiful day in summer

I am trying not

to let it matter

that I can no longer

remember the color

of the spring blossoms

on the backyard

crab-apple tree

of my youth.

a position without pain

The restorative yoga teacher says

to move to a position where nothing

in your body is calling attention to 

pain, and I snort and think that there

is no such position for me, and I wonder

if there is such a position for anyone, 

and then I think, surely there must 

have been such a position at SOME

point in my past, and I realize that,

if there ever was, I can't remember 

it right now, and the grief is another

dull pain I add to the list of pains to

ignore right now while I try to focus

on just breathing in and out and in.

Tomorrow, remind me about the beauty

Tomorrow
remind me
about the beauty of today
if I seem to forget it
remind me if I am limping and wincing and taking my limit of ibuprofen and if I seem puzzled by this
remind me that I didn't leave work early even though I should have and had permission to do so and that was stupid because I might have been able to tell if I was even on the road had I left earlier and the snow would not have been so deep in the parking lot
remind me that at least it wasn't really cold and it wasn't raining or sleeting or blowing yet
remind me that the snow in the trees was that wet snow that weighs down the branches and sometimes glistens when the trees are warm and melt the snow just enough to make it liquid
remind me that my car got stuck in the parking lot 12 inches away from my garage, and I had to shovel my car clear and it took 4 attempts at clearing before I cleared my car enough to get the car moving again
remind me that I preemptively shoveled the area in front of my garage clear for 10 feet to maybe help tomorrow not be so bad when there are six more inches and several layers of ice and I have to get up and leave early in the morning for PT
remind me that I was planning to exercise as soon as I got home anyway, and it's good to vary your exercise routine so that it doesn't get boring
remind me that the snow was so very beautiful as it coated the trees like extra gravity, bending, burdening, turning them down, bowing into graceful lines that belie the strain that is so obviously there if you look, threatening each joint with more potential brokenness
remind me that I twisted my knee and wrenched my hip but that it wasn't the bad one and that I pushed my arms too hard and my obliques were sort of screeching at me by the end but that I only (over)did it because there was no one else to do it for me because I couldn't just leave my car there all night or it would get towed because tow-trucks are about the only things not getting mired in this foot-deep icy slush and it would be way harder to pick up the car at the tow lot because even buses were going off the road and if it took that much effort to make it to work on top of the pain, I'm not sure I'm willing to go even though there are three meetings I have to attend
remind me that I stood and watched the snow in the parking lot lights and the flakes were so thick I could see both them and their shadows falling for minutes
remind me that I fell but it wasn't fast and hard and sharp and that I took too long to figure out how to get back up because thank God there was so much snow that was so wet and slushy that it cushioned the fall
remind me that I iced things down immediately in a manner of speaking by falling into all that ice and slush and then took some ibuprofen to keep the inflammation down and then took a hot bath to preemptively ease the stiffness already creeping up and that I chose not to exercise on my little stair climber and showed restraint (after the fact still counts a little) and rested as I could and put the ibuprofen and some water by my bed, so when I wake up, if things are bad, I don't even have to get up
remind me that the snow and the branches were so beautiful that the pain didn't matter enough to pull me away
remind me

that I got home safe where it was warm (too warm because everyone is panicking and turning their heat up, but maybe that's better for the stiffness)

remind me that I had to stay up late to do the music tonight because all the warning signs indicate I will not be able to even use my fingers to plink out my usual pitifully poor attempt at a tune tomorrow, and I have a second audition in three days and I've never seen the music

remind me

that I had to stay up even later to write because tomorrow will not look the same and I might be in too much pain to write about the beauty and I choose to write about the beauty now 
remind me that I stood watching the trees gleam, white frosted and heavy-laden like elder statesmen, until my hair dripped with melting snow and I could feel it trickling down my neck
remind me that I could not help the other people foundering in the parking lot later that night as I sat in my apartment with the blinds open so I could watch the snow fall
do not remind me that I am 34 and that there are plenty of people my age AND YOUNGER who have it way worse physically because it will not really help me as I am likely pathetically allowing myself to wallow in self-pity and I promise it will be a brief wallow
remind me that the snow was  so very beautiful  if I forget keep  reminding  me because I want the beauty to matter more than the pain I am in remind me

because tomorrow, 

when the blizzard winds have passed through 

and scoured clean away the lovely snow tracing the lines 

of the trees and branches and twigs

and what I have left

is the pain

remind me 

that the pain is not all I have. 

ricochet

Dizzy from the autumnal "oil change"
in my sinuses and exhausted from days
of added side-effect insomnia, I
ricochet around my small apartment
making bruises I will forget how I got
when I (re)discover them tomorrow.

I can still smell it

I wonder if the smell of the lilacs still hangs in that yard or if it's only the memory so strong that makes me think it's still there so long after all the flowers bloomed and died.

Did I ever post this? Because it's a couple years old . . .

I was so proud of myself.  When I left to go visit my family over the holidays, I dropped off a notice that my chronically-clogging drain was clogged again.  This time, I remembered to put away all laundry that was hanging on the rack on the back of my bathroom door.  This way, I did not have to return to my apartment and be mortified when I picked up the note the plumbing man left to say that he'd been there and fixed it and then realized that he had had to walk past all my bras to get into the tiny bathroom. 

Sometimes it's the little triumphs in life that make us happy.

The Life You Save or Something Like It

I've been thinking about suicide lately.  Not in a way that should worry you.  I basically blame the Fray for being on every radio station all the time.

It's my normal radio station's yearly fundraiser, and I already give every month, and it's painful to listen to people try so hard, so I've been getting some variety in my commute.  These new radio experiments have yielded dubious results, such as the transition from "It's Raining Men" to "How to Save a Life."  Mind-melting, really.

Anyway, it made me think of a great song by the Newsboys called "Elle G" from their 1994 album Going Public.  I think I loved that song even before I knew what it was really about, before I realized the clever play on words, maybe even before that boy in my class committed suicide.  That was a rough year; several people I knew died of illnesses or accidents, but that was my first encounter with suicide.

"Elle G" somehow perfectly captures that gaping emptiness regret stamps into you even when you never did anything less than kind to the person who committed suicide.  It seems to capture that huge hole left behind in the people who really had a relationship with the person who took that premature exit.  It captures the way you miss the person, similar but altogether different from the way you miss people who die in some tragic accident.  It also captures a bit of the raging theological argument surrounding suicide in the church. 

Did you know that traditionally suicides weren't buried in the consecrated parts of the cemetery (along with mothers who died in childbirth)?  As if where you were buried had any bearing on your eternal destination.  My anger is for the people who thought it did and did their own preliminary division of sheep and goats that arrogantly.

I remember encountering this in the movie Luther; I think it was one of the things that really cheesed Martin Luther off.  It also seems to cheese the Newsboys off.  Normally, the Newsboys can be fun and twisted, sarcastic and constructively snarky about things in the church that cheese them off.  They put the spotlight on the stupid in clever but obvious ways (a la Steve Taylor, someone they worked with a lot in the early years). 

It's surprising, really, how gently they treat the issue in the song.  Oh, they wrestle with the anger of those left behind, but they plead with those who would condemn people who commit suicide by asking the simple question, "How can we return that which we never did earn?"  They talk the longing to see the person, ask them why, ask them what they could have done.  They grasp God's promise to overcome evil with good and acknowledge that they don't know the answer to any of these questions.  "We haven't a hope beyond Your grace," they say.  The song is a lament, full of pain, and it ends oddly, sort of inexplicably hopeful and with a sort of "It Is Well with My Soul" conviction in the wake of devastation.  (The story behind that hymn is pretty powerful, too.)

It's a beautiful and powerful elegy.  It gets stuck in my head every time I hear it, and it makes me think.  Not bad for a pop song.