Her mother told her
it will better in the morning.
Go to sleep, little one.
Comforted, she sleeps.
Morning was not sunnier,
her pain spilling awake
with runny eggs.
He had his fill
of both women,
wife and mother-in law,
cornering him
again.
Go to hell, both of you!
Washing his hands of the matter
he left her to sop up
with a triangle of dry toast.
Vindicated, he walks.
Jars of individual colors,
olive,
peach,
wild strawberry,
lemon yellow,
so tempting and delicious,
blended into cocoa brown.
I did not give them the time
they needed to dry
as my tempera paints blurred
food into fashion.
Rushing
to grow up,
my childhood attempts
at gluttonous glamour,
when given time,
were so easily crushed.
Stop
your blubbering.
The fact that I have been
up since six
running ragged,
worn and shredded,
asked to solve
yet another person’s
urgent trauma,
is apparently not
a concern of yours
as you drop your demands
onto my overflowing stack.
But you caught me
at the end of my Jonah day,
exhausted, crabby,
and downright
drowned
and no amount
of sweetly sticky
gooey compliments
will help me
swallow that.
A languid dude
tells absolute location
with attitude
in lounge wear;
pain and just living
co-exist
in his world.
It is hard to locate
the energy he needs
to find her,
so he sleeps.
No place for dreams.
Only blackness needed,
so necessary to heal
the anguish
he leaves
on his pillow
where love and betrayal
crossed lines.
floating around,
lost in time,
forgotten by all that live on.
lost in the dust of times long past,
unknown to all,
forgotten except when something goes wrong.
never there,
always standing by,
this will forever be my own fate.
left alone to fight my tears
time will never change my emotions.
left alone in a world all my own,
where I am never heard.
always silent,
always here yet never there.
staying in the same old place,
forced to be here while the world forgets,
no one hears my calls or pleads,
time will never set me free
imprisoning me forever more.
searching for someone who understands,
never shall I find such a person,
for I am left here to face eternity alone.
a slave to my past life’s feelings,
I shall be trapped for I’ve lost the key.
I gave it to those I left behind.
they threw it away once they forgot,
even though they tried not.
I became a slave to eternity.
lonely from the many nights I’ve spent alone,
wishing for the affection I need so.
single I shall stay,
until I find the one.
gotta find him soon,
before I go mad.
from seeing him,
only in my dreams and wishes.
forever it seems,
him so close,
and yet so far.
an inch in my dreams,
forever in life.
it seems I will never have him,
and so I wish with all my hopes and dreams,
that he will find a way to me,
before my time is gone…
She could blame the caffeine
or the thousand and one
details and unmade decisions
that follow her
home from work
waking her up
at 3:07 to throw off
covers and expectations
of a good night’s sleep,
but she doesn’t.
She just stumbles
to the bathroom,
closing her eyes again
to the glare of the light,
only a sliver
squeezing through
while cupping her hands
trying to sip enough
to swallow an aspirin.
She lay back down,
dreams beginning
to slide again
into distorted cubicles
and his accusation
that work
is
her life.
When the alarm finally rings,
its sharpness
reawakens that throbbing headache,
and she finds only a dribble
of relief
rolling onto the coolness
of his side of the sheet.
She could blame him
for her pain
and her thirst,
but she doesn’t,
faulting only her skillful fingers,
unable to catch water
or men.
Talking frogs
and levitating children
danced with mushrooms
in my imagination.
Fanciful sojourns
to mystical places
could hold me
spell bound
for hours at a time.
Then I grew
too busy for books,
my hands caught up
in other tasks.
Untethered,
I have flown
into the place
where exertion
and exhaustion
collide.
If a floating lady
with a sparkling wand
wants to make me
sleep for a thousand years,
then let her.
In the last crisis
when your family needed
money,
time,
empathy,
anything,
your name was at the bottom
of the To Call list.
So you could sit back
with comments like,
“Yeah, that bites,”
knowing someone else
stepped up to solve
the day’s problems.
You’re the screw-up.
People don’t expect anything
from you
knowing you
stretch yourself
just twisting your mind
around your curly fries.
Yeah, that bites.
My eyelids instinctively squinted
and I had to turn my head
away from him
as if the saltiness
of the sardines
he was eating
could find a way
to sting my eyes.
He just laughed
as he dangled
the slippery fish
in front of my pinched nose
before opening his mouth,
dropping it in
and moaning
with an ecstasy
that a child
shouldn’t know.
Perhaps his intention
was a father’s expectation
that I would grow
tough enough
to cope with anything
and anybody.
If I had been a smarter child
I would have run
from his haunting laughter
that slithered its way
into my dreams.
But my tears were preserved
like salty brine,
and forty years later
as they begin to fall,
I smell the fish
and hear the cutting metal
of his opening can.
Her thumbs whitened
white pressure spots
against her fist,
a contrast to the hot red
polish of her anger
toward him.
Four curved ‘C’s
lined up in her palm
the compression
of her fingernails,
the only order
her balled fists offered
to hide the
C allous,
C old,
C ruel,
C haos of her frustration.
When she C hipped
a nail,
he was smart enough
to run.
Cold winter winds
struck my forehead
sending me backwards,
mittens covering
what they could.
I learned a toe-heal
crunching loud boot step
that tested the path
I could not see,
until insecurity won
and I had to face the bitterness.
Feet forward now
I am walking
with my eyes open
as far as they go
without making myself
look like a character
in a bad B-movie
reacting to a ghostly
apparition.
Yet, I stumble again
walking where I shouldn’t go,
my mouth
leading me down
a bitter path
of pain
that cut my cord
to Momma.
My mittens
hold no solace.
My slippers made no sound
as I crept with the morning
to curl in Grandma’s wingback
and tuck my robe over my legs.
If my cat had the quiet foresight
to know that I was leaving
a shedding of myself
into the ambient air
of that that room,
she never warned me.
Now here, in the same chair
that moved with us
to this different place,
I feel the baldness
of myself
exposed to no one
but my cat.
Now knowing
my own shameful
revealing of my regrets,
I yearn for the opportunity
to go back
and gather up
the bits I left of myself.
Back in the old house
where the floorboards
knew where I should walk,
other slippers
have swept my dust.
Grandma had a wringer washer
that could crack your arm
if you were so foolish
as to hang on
when the cloth
compressed.
The bucket caught
the dirty liquid
that the clothes
could no longer bare.
I think when your sadness
leaked onto me,
I absorbed more
than you released.
I carried it,
sloshing and spilling out
overflowing with my silence,
and you never felt
the loss
of a drop.
Put another sticker,
a shiny clean star,
on my chore chart.
I have earned it today.
Slithering worms
I’ve tried to bait,
make me turn away
stabbing them
telepathically
unable to look.
The texture of oatmeal
pressing with my tongue
to the roof
of my mouth
makes me want
to vomit,
knowing it
would look the same
in the bowl.
Sliminess is disgusting,
sludging
with a viscosity
that I can’t abide.
But somehow
the feeling
of pumpkin guts,
squeezng between
my frozen fingers,
squirting slippery seeds
to terrorize my family,
is SQUISHINGLY,
OOZINGLY,
beautiful.
EXPRESSIVE DOMAIN:
A CLOSE LOOK AT LIFE.
As a kaleidoscope artist, I welcome you to join with me while I reflect on life through poetry.
Patricia A. Hawkenson
phawkenson@ecasd.k12.wi.us
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