Playing With-Child

You play a game that no one knows
At first you imagine the life within
How much of it would be you
And how much of it would be him

And then you imagine
How you would relate to a one-year old
the first year
A two-year old
the second
A three-year old
the third year
Four -

Some years you forget to play
Other years like mornings you're not ready to begin
You stay in bed
Trying to keep warm
The memory of the sin

You keep the receipt as a testimony of a boy
that would have been
ten - now,
and of the price that you paid
and wish had been more.

beached secrets

She keeps her secrets like oceans do
buried in her belly
assumes that they will not bloat
believes that in Silence
there is no pain
there is no anger
that shuttles
between the sharpness of his tongue
and the hardening of her heart,
the face of his palm
and the soft of her cheek.

Once -
she thought to leave him
before her son could begin
to remember
but it had become so familiar
that even her son
didn't know any other way to be

And so she relived it
every time she witnessed him
shuttle his anger
from his fists to his wife

And still she kept her silence
with all the will of a martyr

Unaware that her secrets
had long since floated
like bodies
even oceans no longer want to keep

Crazy Type Love

For Sheila,

Thank you for inviting me to your wedding. Here is the poem that you asked me to recite. May you always have the crazy type love.


CRAZY TYPE LOVE

I want this love
the crazy type love
the kind that keeps you nervous
part panic-stricken, part aroused
by its uncertainty

The kind that is as raw and as visceral
as the knee-jerk moment of revenge
the kind that makes you want to
throw yourself
into a ring with a crazed man
as if that would escape it!

The kind that is ruled by instinct
that leaves you stripped of pride
and dumb with wonder

The kind which needs expression
by every means possible
so that I would mark my skin
or exhaust my strength
because to keep it inside me?
- unrealised -
physically aches

The kind in which
thoughts of him
connect with
dreams of her
so that you find each other
in your wake
and continue your company in your sleep

The kind that is emboldened
by the rhythm and repeat of intertwining

The kind that keeps you drugged
and devoted
so that even a prolonged absence
and many antidotes later
never quite erase
the imprint of you

And so I hang
on your every word and gesture
only too aware that it might end
just as simply
as one wakes from a dream

And I am at once nostalgic
Anticipating that it might end
and desperate to prolong
the most I have ever
and may just ever
feel alive

I want this love
because I am afraid of this love
and I am afraid of this love
because I want this love

And so today, in sum of what is and what has been and what could be,
we simply say, “I do”.