I am not a girl of Summer though the sea runs through my veins and I would happily swim from dawn to dusk.
I am not a Coppertone baby
with flowing yellow hair, golden strands gleaming
in the sun, perfection of tan skin
and white smiles.
I am a girl of Autumn,
of Winter burnished leaves and snowy landscapes my favorite things; books and fires and sweaters and long walks my pleasures.
I am the pale girl with hair brown as a sable coat, soft and rich and full of depth. But
it is when its copper threads catch the sun unexpectedly you’re given a hint of the fiery and passionate nature oft hidden revealed to few known intimately
only to one.
Beginnings, new dawn breaks with a whisper. Layers peeled back like blankets or the first glimpse of skin in summer; winter, a recent memory. Left hand foraging for comfort …
Published on Medium: P.S. I Love You for Poetry Sunday
Sometimes writing is like slipping off your clothes in the waning light of day. Effortless exhalation on a sigh. Most often it is retching in solitude, a heaving up of your insides. Results that are never pretty, generally painful but necessary …
Published on Medium: P.S. I Love You for Poetry Sunday
Joan Didion said in her memoir, “The Year of Magical Thinking,” ‘You sit down to dinner and life as you know it ends.’
Life as I knew it ended years ago. My marriage, which had been on a slow march toward its end from inception, kept me engrossed and distracted with its disintegration and a gradual and normalizing creep of isolation.
During this time, my mother was ill, though none of us knew it. We attributed her forgetfulness to aging. We had no clue that her brain was also on that slow march to disintegration. I reflect when I first realized I’d lost her, or a portion of her, and though there were many moments over the years I recall as suspect, the first moment emblazoned in my memory as a loss is when I turned 50.
I am the youngest of three children and the only girl — my mother and I have had a close relationship. Forgetting my birthday is not something she would have done. But, she did. At the time, alarm bells did not ring, quite possibly because of the pain and turmoil in my marriage. As I’ve said, I was distracted, and it’s challenging to fight a battle on two fronts.
With much going on beneath the surface
it’s the things she doesn’t say
you need to take heed of,
for the secrets to her are locked up
within those silences …
Published on Medium: P.S. I Love You for Poetry Sunday
Siren Whispers 