Didn't/Humdrum Haiku

Didn't

Here is what we didn't do:

Fight
Wash dishes
Take the bus
Swear
Confront
Use the laundromat
Go hungry
Smoke or drink
Question our faith
Move
Shock
Realize our privileges

But I wanted--I want--to do much more.
I want to be more. Feel more. Touch more.

Ask. Move. Shake.
Question until my mind gives up.
I want to shock you.

All my wanting is too much.
You're afraid. I am not safe.
I am not the idea you had of me.
I am a Mystery, even to myself.
I am Other.
I will not be who you want me to be.

Haiku One

What if I scream it:
Yes, I'm watching the cookies!
I've got this apron.

Haiku Two: For Noah

moon stuck in the clouds
nightlight for this frightened child
mother of the sky

Haiku Three

you taught me to love
untamed, room for the wildness
that we know so well

Vinegar (October)

Vinegar (October)

The house smells faintly
of vinegar
the neighbor's dogs
for once: silent

spicy tea that tastes
of Nepal
rests on the coffee table,
waiting

I am waiting,
with clouded hope,
a heart ungrounded,
guiltily

I should be doing
more of the Right Things:
asserting, projecting
myself into the world
finding work outside
this vinegar-scented house

certainly not
sipping tea in silence

Purple

Purple

I will

hammer that nail
wherever it suits me

stuff my apron pockets
full of garden tomatoes

stand on a stool
to knead my bread

eat my carrots whole
raw, unpeeled, purple

not match my clothing
with my purse
(not even carry a purse if i don't want to)

celebrate my body
in nakedness, in clothing

decide who i am
and (i will) be that

i will be.

09.26.10

The reality of being back in the U.S. is flying in my face now.

The putting-myself-into-the-right-boxes. Being someone slightly off-center from my true self. Being confined, sanitized, respectable. I'm scared of that. Scared because I've been there before, for years. I know.

I must unfurl. I've begun. I am birthing a new self. It is shocking and shattering and healing. It is wildness. How dare I let anything tame it?

Nevertheless, I am attached to a world, a life in which expectations will always exist. What am I to do? I wonder if I've been born into the wrong world. Or time. Or dimension.

Another universe lives inside me.

From 07.06.10 & 08.02.10

07.06.10

It is a split. A parallel world that I know is not a figment of my imagination. It was real that I lived in Nepal. It is real; it's still there. It's real that I am back at home. I'm here. I carry within me that other world. I carry Nepal. It's real.

Why does it feel so much like fantasy? Why does it seem like so very long ago? Why can't my arms stretch far enough to touch both of these very different, very distanced worlds? And why can't I gather all my selves into one coherent Heidi?

08.02.10

Our car smells like crayons. Better than New Car Smell. But I think I'd rather just have crayons.

I've bitten off my nails. Again. I'll keep biting until it's safe to stop.

We're living in a periwinkle house on Mary Street. Our shit is everywhere.

I had to put my shit in a plastic container and hand it to the doctor.

I see topis; my heart swells.

We listened to bluegrass, spontaneous folk music in a warehouse on Walnut Street.

We watched Neal play the banjo on the patio.

I'm surprised by my life.

I hope Ella remembered me. Everyone else remembered me. I wish they (all) didn't.

I spoke my wildest dream out loud; it came true.

I am tired of boxes, straight lines, answers, safety, sameness. I don't fit inside. I'm curvy.

I am wild, evolving.

Goodbye

Goodbye. Life is full of this word. I've said it so many times before, but never with such finality. I may not see these same faces and places again. I can't accept finality. Oh, how I love an open end! The Possibility, the Chance, the Maybe lingering until it fades without my noticing. The long, subtle disappearance of hope--nothing too sudden, too noticeable. Easing out, bit by bit.

But life is sudden. These days, these days are fast and loud and certain. A count down. Specific dates and times when goodbye must be said. Finally. I can't even pretend that it's not real. It's very much my reality.

Hidden

Somewhere like
a clearing in a forest,
a box in a bedroom closet,
that triangular room under the basement stairs,
up the sleeve of your homemade dress

Messages
bones
secret loves
old kleenex

The things we hide
the things we save
the secrets and secret spaces
somewhere, scattered carefully
throughout our hidden lives.

Strawberries/04.07.10

Strawberries

I dreamed that strawberries were $1 each. Too much. I put them back. Back. I wanted to go back. We were on a familiar country road, mom. You and I. The breeze was perfect, you were beautiful as always, the strawberries were strawberry-red. And I ran down that road, trying to go back, getting nowhere, strawberryless.

04.07.10

My hand is shaking, dry, some vague shade of brown. Like a leaf. The wind, the world is swirling. I'm not sure how tightly I'm holding on. Enough to watch earth-colors spinning round me.

Oh, life! Why must everything be so intense and colorful and terrible and wild? I feel it. That life-energy beats inside me; I don't know what to do with it. So my hands shake, my spirit quakes with mystery and being and life. Does anyone else feel this way?

Carriage/Diagonal

Carriage

How can you bear it?
All the knowing, the feeling
under your too-thin skin?
How can you not break?
All that past, that history
Pressing on your bony shoulders?
How can you?

Diagonal

When you are gone.
I stretch
legs, arms, hair
sprawling. You are gone.
I stretch
to fill the empty bed
the spaces
where you aren't.
Where your arms, legs, hair
should be
sprawling.

03.26.10

03.26.10

Restless. giddy. sad. excited. sentimental. intense. scared. unhinged. hungry. unsure. torn. anxious. reluctant. electrified. whirling.

We're making decisions. Things are happening. Plane tickets are booked. Destinations are sure. We are making changes, moving, leaving, arriving, rearranging, relearning, reliving. We're in control; it's up to us. It's our own path we're making. But it's new. We don't know this way. We are knowingly going into the unknown.

02.24.10/Half

02.24.10

I am thinking about missing Nepal. Sitting in the warm, February sun, enjoying the fact there there IS a warm February sun here. Whiling away an afternoon with window shopping, writing, people-watching, sharing this space with strangers.

I hear a generator. A crow. A woman speaking English-Nepali. A tourist chatting with her friend. Car horns. The pop-fizz of my soda. An airplane. A gust of spring-like wind.

It's raining tree-bits, an evergreen shedding mini pinecones onto my hair. I love the warmth. The green. It reminds me that I'm alive.

Half

Wednesday afternoon
a half week, a half day
a half-written letter to a friend
half a world away.

I am half here, half home
split, divided, bisected
eating orange halves
half-heartedly.

02.10.10/02.18.10

02.10.10

Today, the earth vibrated with fertility, with life. I wanted to bury myself in its chocolate soil, live off it, become it. Today, the sky unveiled its eyes, shy no more. A shameless, naked blue. And the mountains, always there, stepped out of the parting clouds like royalty. Sometimes, the beauty is too huge, too delicious, too lush and colorful to bear.

02.18.10

Home is up to its knees in snow. Nowhere to go but...home.

Home. Full of wide, too-bright smiles, of crushing, gushing hugs. Full of reminders, familiarities, sameness. White sparkling, tidy.

The End

The End

The End:
What does it smell like?
Snow. wine. fire. autumn. ink.
What?

The Unknown:
Tasteless. Odorless. Mysterious.
Until proven otherwise.

But secretly, I think it smells like:
A spring breeze. bread baking. love-making. old paper...
Like coming home.

Tiny/Untitled

Tiny

My life seems to be going backwards. I am growing small. I was much more adult, certain, responsible, driven than myself today. Today, I doubt and question, I am lazier (or more relaxed?), groping for purpose. I even dress younger than I used to. I am getting older, but not wiser, almost over the "mid-20's" hill, barrelling toward 30 without a clue. I am fitting in less and less, forgetting how to be "normal", socially acceptable. In a world of my own where "cats and rabbits all reside in fancy little houses..." and I fit through doorways of a size I never thought possible! I am day-dreaming and having nightmares. I have tantrums, I pretend. I am curious; I am asking why.

I want a nightlight, music to lull me to deep sleep, my mom to scratch my back with her cool, knuckly fingers. I want to stand behind someone's skirts, hiding from the big scary world. I'm so tiny next to it, and getting tinier.

Untitled

I know that sound:
It is you awake, moving, changing
Bedsheets shifting, sun on your long hair.
It is a beginning, a becoming
Older, curiouser
A new day of you in the world
I hope it (the world) notices, changes.

Homeness/Grace

Homeness

And there is one place, a small space
that deserves the name home.
Here: you, me
the homeness of us.

Grace

On days when:
my pants are too short
my feet are too big
I have all the wrong words


I think of the beauty of imperfection.

Yin I & II

Yin I

I am a white moon
cold, suspended in black
dreaming of the dawn.

There are sad stories
hidden in my bones, my blood
now, will you listen?

Yin II

I'm all
off-balance, out of sync
the cold moon side of me taking over

I'm so
incomplete, empty-handed
my feet stepping just out of rhythm

It's very
dangerous, peculiar
how dark, how dizzying the world is
when you are gone
I'm afraid

Thanksgiving Day/The Question

Thanksgiving Day

It smells like autumn
down by the corner store
I linger just long enough
to miss home.

The Question

And the question, no--the Question is:
What nonchalant adventures
what lazy, meaningful afternoons
what wild conversations
what poignant moments
what is IT, really, that everyone else is so engaged in, while I flit about, gripping my to-do lists, my comfort, my pen, with white-knuckled angst?

What door should I be knocking on? Where is Inside? Where is everyone else, and what on earth are they doing?

2:00PM/11.16.09

2:00PM

2:00PM, the sun's just rising
dead plants unfurling their leaves
I blow smoke into the new air,
it clouds my face
the afternoon smolders, waits
for night to cover its blemishes.

11.16.09

So much to feel and so little time
for the angry skies
the too-quiet afternoons
for joy that is oh so far away
the spaces where a hand, a shoulder should be
tears, tears.

08.05.09/Feel

08.05.09

It rains when you leave.
I melt, become unrecognizable
waiting for the salvation of sun,
of you.

Feel

Feel the season
coming up from under your
brown feet
a rumble, a dance
coming up to shake your
tired body

Feel the way
you move without trying
you dance without music
free and shaking and
full of change

Sometimes You Freak Out

Sometimes You Freak Out

It's the entrapment, the reality of no escape from:
the noise of off-key singing
my sluggish body
the shyness that pulls me inside
the assault of stares, grazing fingers
foreign idioms
a city running itself to death, chasing its own mangy tail.

It's not knowing who I am, having no sense of grounding, of being known, of being someone. I am nameless; I am every name (except ones I know). I am leaning against the air, against memories, shadows, dreams. And they aren't strong enough. They don't hold me. I am alone.

Reckless/Rain

Reckless

It is such a reckless stillness
the way it crowds out, makes space for
nothing but itself
expands inside me, crashing into my
body, changing its shape
without making a sound

Rains

The rains teach me
remind me
that sometimes we need to let ourselves be
dirty, grit between our toes, mud splashing up
to our hands, outsretched
to receive the gift of the clouds
sometimes we need to be reminded
that we were never really clean
to begin with