the kind of hope I'm having

Lizzle commissioned a poem about this problem I am having because she thought it would help.

See, she wants me to be able to locate my hope, hope for myself, not for anyone else, just for myself.

And I thought of loss and a time when I was hopeful about loss.

I couldn't tell anyone at the time because they would have thought I was crazy or awful for hoping in death.

But I am not crazy, I am alive. And though alive might often be mistaken for crazy because of all the sweating and huffing and puffing and emotional volatility (as under control as it often is) that is associated (and rightly so!) with being alive, crazy and alive are two very different ideas.

So here is a little poem about the kind of hope I am having.

Mind you, it isn't the kind of greeting card hope you want to send a friend, it is not the big kind of hope that gets you out of bed in the morning unless

you are like me:

the kind of person who is only willing to get out of bed for tiny, broken down hopes like Ficus trees and falling leaves and

maybe the hope that you will be all right even if you are caught dancing in the kitchen with the Albanian cook: When my boss peeked in the window we were really getting down, shaking our heads and hips and our hands were raised over our heads and it was the kind of dancing you can't just stop because you are caught because we began laughing in rhythm with the song and our bodies kept moving, we kept moving--we were up and out of bed and we kept moving.

The Hope

When you died you were wearing a pink nightgown and looking quite vulnerable as the rigor crept through you.

Your pale skin had a power over us, what was left

of your thinning hair refused to rest

against the pillow.

You were the dead with a bed head

and you would have laughed at yourself, the way you always had.

When it happened

They said you weren’t alone, and I suspect

there may have been a nurse in the room when the last little bit of life fell

out of you, rolled across the floor in search of another haunt.

Maybe a memory of family lodged in the corner chaos of your brain

finally showed itself:

a picture of you with your sister perhaps

keeping you company.

Then eventually

we arrived, gathering like seagulls on the cliff

Standing over,

your little brittle body—a precipice—and we, forced to jump toward

(your) death,

the next best thing in life.

Suddenly unsure of my wings,

I began pacing, back and forth, near the rocky razor edge of self-doubt

And fell into the grieving question cycle:

Who will I be now that you are gone?

What will I do with the voice that sounds like yours bouncing around

in my memory?

When I say your name again you will not answer;

Will I be alone in your absence? Will I be anything at all?

What do I want now that you are gone::

my desire for your love defined me::

your presence filled spaces::

now those spaces are like wounds::

You cut yourself

out of my bark,

You widdled my surface coming close,

wielding guilt like a pocket knife.

Disappointment threatens to move in like an infection

If we deny the lacrimal of love to drip its disinfectant.

The heat of Hope cauterized the edges and yet

There is swelling and throbbing but there is no emptiness here.

We are full of ourselves.

Our words for your leaving caught and lumping like mucus in our throats

So we gave in to hope, not the big Hope you wanted for us,

the little hopes:

That we will each touch your hand once, then

Look into your face, then

Then go eat breakfast

Without you.

That we will sing your favorite songs and eat your favorite foods, then

remember you well, not fully but respectfully.

Not for you

For ourselves.

We will hold onto what we enjoyed and sort out

The painful pieces of you, your remains.

We will find a way to leave them behind,

In our own time

Not just because you died

But because we did not.

And all this time we must have thought we were doing this for you, with you

But now you are gone and we go on.

We go on in the ways you taught us

Saying the words you said—

And laughing;

Saying the words you said—

And raging like a wild fire

cuts a swath through the forest of story, our anger toward you

burning a jagged and unpredicted hollow down the center.

But we are the forest people—loving,

the tall trees—crowding the fueling dueling underbrush—we know

what fire means

what fire brings:

the heat the seeds need

to tell them how the old is dying, drying and burning away

making room for (the new)

you.

We are the Phoenix seeds, rising slowly from the acid of the ashes.

You asked to be cremated, never knowing (how hot) our anger

was burning you alive all this time.

You shrieked at us, and we put the fire inside out with our tears,

Until today

when the tears come all salt and gather enough oil as they race over our noses: they splash and spit across the flame, splattering, sizzling, and finally crystallized across the soiled floor::

You are the salt of the earth and we have salted the field

crying over the loss

and then remembered the blessing of your dried marrow.

Looking across, bearing the pall, it seems all (hope) is lost

Just because you are lost.

But the truth is

we are not lost

because we are losing you.