Time was torn up this week, into little pieces here and there. Bits were exalted, massive amounts were wasted. Whether creating or lounging, you were there with me. In my head as I baked, I stirred you in to cookies. In the garden as I tended, my tears for you softened the earth. The fruits have grown up, they are almost full-term. As I lay on my side, curled inside of a pain, you were there. You are always there, drying the tears that living eyes no longer see.
Many of the shreds of time this week were spent watching and that is all. What I saw was this. One leaf caught the wind differently than the rest and it became my favorite. One dragonfly sat where the others would not. Like a bird, it perched upon a wire. Resting its wings in the manner of its greatest foe. One girl sang a song the others did not know. She was okay with being alone. I tried to make time fun for her. We smiled together.
One breath was deeper than the rest. I felt it push me into the ground, down with the cool thought that winter had shaped and kept safe for me. My greatest fear. My greatest truth. My greatest loss. These are all the same. You are gone. I can't tear away time enough to forget, nor do I want to. You stay with me in the pieces.
Night, night Frost
Mama loves you.
Monday, July 26, 2010
Saturday, July 17, 2010
I Want Them to Know How Real You Were (picture of my baby Frost - you don't have to look)
I'm sorry if this is too difficult an image for some eyes.
Frost, I want to show you to people so badly. I don't know if this is the right thing to do. For me right now I think it is what I need to do. I am being selfish. This is the only time I will do this. I love you too much not to show you. I can't stop thinking about who you would have become.
I'm going to write something now to take up space before your picture.
The sky was made of Renaissance colors today. I had seen this morning's clouds in a painting in an art history book years before. Not in a museum in a foreign country, I am not that fortunate. But today I walked under it, today I felt it, as if I were far away and years apart. I walked under the past this morning.
A cricket circled in on itself in front of me. The two birds that had picked off one of the insect's legs, had left the remainder as they scrambled away from my jutting footsteps.
I went inside, the light was no longer that from the brush of a 16Th Century Italian Master. It was harsh and a reminder.
I saw another bug on the linoleum. This time a beetle. It turned its head as a cat would and looked to my feet, no longer jutting. I stood still as the insect chose its path. It scurried off in a straight line.
I continued to my destination. Niceties were exchanged and I went back the way I had come.
I returned to the hall, the beetle was still walking. This time I noticed that it was dragging one of its back legs. I wondered how many times it would travel in the same direction today. Did it know where it was supposed to be? Where it was going?
When a part of one is injured, one seems to repeat a motion over and over. Therapy, I guess.
I went out the door. First, I noticed the two birds. One, or both, had collected on their interrupted meal. Second, I noticed that the sky had given way to the blue of mid-day too early. Only one monarch of a cloud, poised opposite the sunrise, had remained in the colors of the past. The past of 500 years ago. The past of five minutes before.
I drove by the place where a boy died 13 years ago. My brother's friend. All that remains in the spot where he died is a white scar on the trunk of a tree where his car struck fast. And two reflectors on the wooden fence to warn eyes in the night. These are the only markers of his sad end. People driving by know nothing.
No one will ever know about these creatures if I don't tell about them right now before I forget. Their reason, I still do not realize.
A bug was trapped inside a hospital, what purpose could it serve outside of its natural ecosystem.
A cricket was eaten before it could chirp, the birds made a sport of his life.
A boy let go of caution and sped into a tree. The next day it was said that he was to be a father. His son grew up without him.
I will tell your story forever Frost. I don't have to hurry because I will never forget.
A baby died inside of his Mother. All twisted up in his life line. He had a face, he had a body, he had toes and fingers. He had our blood. He had eyes. And yet he never saw a sunrise in the sky, or in a painting.
Night, night Frost
Mama loves you.
Frost, I want to show you to people so badly. I don't know if this is the right thing to do. For me right now I think it is what I need to do. I am being selfish. This is the only time I will do this. I love you too much not to show you. I can't stop thinking about who you would have become.
I'm going to write something now to take up space before your picture.
The sky was made of Renaissance colors today. I had seen this morning's clouds in a painting in an art history book years before. Not in a museum in a foreign country, I am not that fortunate. But today I walked under it, today I felt it, as if I were far away and years apart. I walked under the past this morning.
A cricket circled in on itself in front of me. The two birds that had picked off one of the insect's legs, had left the remainder as they scrambled away from my jutting footsteps.
I went inside, the light was no longer that from the brush of a 16Th Century Italian Master. It was harsh and a reminder.
I saw another bug on the linoleum. This time a beetle. It turned its head as a cat would and looked to my feet, no longer jutting. I stood still as the insect chose its path. It scurried off in a straight line.
I continued to my destination. Niceties were exchanged and I went back the way I had come.
I returned to the hall, the beetle was still walking. This time I noticed that it was dragging one of its back legs. I wondered how many times it would travel in the same direction today. Did it know where it was supposed to be? Where it was going?
When a part of one is injured, one seems to repeat a motion over and over. Therapy, I guess.
I went out the door. First, I noticed the two birds. One, or both, had collected on their interrupted meal. Second, I noticed that the sky had given way to the blue of mid-day too early. Only one monarch of a cloud, poised opposite the sunrise, had remained in the colors of the past. The past of 500 years ago. The past of five minutes before.
I drove by the place where a boy died 13 years ago. My brother's friend. All that remains in the spot where he died is a white scar on the trunk of a tree where his car struck fast. And two reflectors on the wooden fence to warn eyes in the night. These are the only markers of his sad end. People driving by know nothing.
No one will ever know about these creatures if I don't tell about them right now before I forget. Their reason, I still do not realize.
A bug was trapped inside a hospital, what purpose could it serve outside of its natural ecosystem.
A cricket was eaten before it could chirp, the birds made a sport of his life.
A boy let go of caution and sped into a tree. The next day it was said that he was to be a father. His son grew up without him.
I will tell your story forever Frost. I don't have to hurry because I will never forget.
A baby died inside of his Mother. All twisted up in his life line. He had a face, he had a body, he had toes and fingers. He had our blood. He had eyes. And yet he never saw a sunrise in the sky, or in a painting.
Night, night Frost
Mama loves you.
Thursday, July 1, 2010
Summer Years Ago
It's Summertime Frost. The world is bright with heat, there is water for splashing in, and baby birds learn to fly. I have been taking life slow. I have been reading and enjoying the work of others, letting them guide my thoughts. It's easier. Right now I need easy. When the pain comes up I fall into it so deeply. So I'm trying for easy hoping that the pain isn't triggered. This is why I've had a hard time writing lately. I've wanted to smile and feel the way I did before all of the death.
The first death I remember was my grandfather's when I was six. He died in the summer on his birthday. I remember going to the funeral home for the visitation and touching his hand and it being as cold as I had ever felt. I remember crying with everything I had. I remember the loss. I also have a false memory of the time, something that I remember that is not possible. My parents did not think that I should go to the funeral because of how upset I got when I saw him in his coffin. So I stayed at my Grandma and Grandpa's house. The false part of my memory is that I remember being there with my Grandma during the funeral. Of course she was not with me, she was at the cemetary putting her husband in the ground. I think that I painted this false memory for myself to make things easier. I don't know what older person was really with me, but when I remember it in my thoughts it is always my Grandmother.
The deaths continued and the pain of them got harder and so it became harder for me to make them easier. My Dad and you. Not easy at all, Frost.
So tonight I'm going to do something easier because it's a way for me to be close to you, I like to think that you are watching me and know what I say and think, and believe that all the good in it is for you.
I found this piece of old paper in a box in the basement, I wrote it when I was in highschool. I don't remember what I was thinking at the time. Maybe you have an idea.
One night I wrote Carthage on my foot,
And then I built a little house.
In the house, two children lived.
The children were different.
One with eyes of purest charcoal,
Yet in shadow, neon.
The other's were black also, yet collected light secretly, as a prism does.
Their home, a huge window, was carpeted with pith and dying ferns.
The foliage was trapped in shapes that resembled both lofty parlors and the humblest of shacks.
It was the craft of Gods, and angrily they played games of nothings in the soft of the moss.
It was ornamented only by two forms.
Each looming distant and strange.
One was the stream, a horrendous waking pool.
Contaminated,
A shrinking curve.
The second, an art of the simplest form.
Two points and a smear, the unprotected door.
And there the children played, waking each day anew.
Their soft snouts breathe with every sound,
And toss about, through cheek and bone.
They tell no stories, nor hear of pain.
They only sleep, in seeming and sensuous crowns.
The easiest thing for me in the world is to believe that I knew of you and your sister before you were named.
Night, night Frost
Mama loves you.
The first death I remember was my grandfather's when I was six. He died in the summer on his birthday. I remember going to the funeral home for the visitation and touching his hand and it being as cold as I had ever felt. I remember crying with everything I had. I remember the loss. I also have a false memory of the time, something that I remember that is not possible. My parents did not think that I should go to the funeral because of how upset I got when I saw him in his coffin. So I stayed at my Grandma and Grandpa's house. The false part of my memory is that I remember being there with my Grandma during the funeral. Of course she was not with me, she was at the cemetary putting her husband in the ground. I think that I painted this false memory for myself to make things easier. I don't know what older person was really with me, but when I remember it in my thoughts it is always my Grandmother.
The deaths continued and the pain of them got harder and so it became harder for me to make them easier. My Dad and you. Not easy at all, Frost.
So tonight I'm going to do something easier because it's a way for me to be close to you, I like to think that you are watching me and know what I say and think, and believe that all the good in it is for you.
I found this piece of old paper in a box in the basement, I wrote it when I was in highschool. I don't remember what I was thinking at the time. Maybe you have an idea.
One night I wrote Carthage on my foot,
And then I built a little house.
In the house, two children lived.
The children were different.
One with eyes of purest charcoal,
Yet in shadow, neon.
The other's were black also, yet collected light secretly, as a prism does.
Their home, a huge window, was carpeted with pith and dying ferns.
The foliage was trapped in shapes that resembled both lofty parlors and the humblest of shacks.
It was the craft of Gods, and angrily they played games of nothings in the soft of the moss.
It was ornamented only by two forms.
Each looming distant and strange.
One was the stream, a horrendous waking pool.
Contaminated,
A shrinking curve.
The second, an art of the simplest form.
Two points and a smear, the unprotected door.
And there the children played, waking each day anew.
Their soft snouts breathe with every sound,
And toss about, through cheek and bone.
They tell no stories, nor hear of pain.
They only sleep, in seeming and sensuous crowns.
The easiest thing for me in the world is to believe that I knew of you and your sister before you were named.
Night, night Frost
Mama loves you.
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