excerpt from a letter to the creator.

when i go to sleep, i feel like my stomach is turning slowly inside out. i close my eyes and imagine it is and think i am becoming the type of person i despise.

but with these ducks swarming around me, i'm realizing again that i do care. i do care about these ducks and i am capable of caring about the world.

maybe if i cry every bit of water from my body, it will wash me clean in the way that Jesus' blood used to. maybe faith means crying when it all seems too much and believing that the tears will come back as warm rain. maybe the way to heal is to hug my pain and tell it i am going to do everything i can to change to change you back into love.

i've spent so long believing that love is always soft. and i'm not used to love that stings more than it soothes, so i call it disruption.

graying ears.

like god,
they watch their children grown old
before they do and
lose control of their back legs almost completely.

and when their children become elderly with
graying ears and eyes filmy blue,
and refuse to
eat any food they have to chew,
and when the cancer on his hip is too far into the bone
for the surgery to make much of a difference,
the parents take away the pain
and place their children's ashes on the mantle.

on a friday night.

my mother, my friend Kara, and i stood outside the Chicago theater in october of my sophomore year of high school. it was my first time seeing ani difranco in concert, so i was shivering for several reasons.

uncomfortable with the dyed mohawks and women holding hands around us, my mother made small talk with a woman standing next to her. she appeared to be in her mid 40's, wearing a red windbreaker and toting a clipboard.

when the doors finally opened, my mother said goodbye and we climbed to the nosebleeds for our seats. as the opener finger picked on stage, my mom's hand flew up to her mouth in a gasp.“lindsay,” she said holding a pamphlet, “i think i just gave money to the communist party.”

mass.

so it turns out that crazy isn't the only thing that has been growing in my mother's head.

the powerful, ominous "they" say it's about an inch in diameter and is growing on a nerve that transmits sensation into her face.

how do i comfort the person i'm slowly becoming numb to?

how do i pray for sensation to return when i have been praying so long for thicker skin? i've forgotten what it's like to feel good with her, to feel certain of her love.

so, is my tumor operable? do i let myself feel again? is the same god who put that tumor on her brain stem big enough to take it out of me?

these are questions i should ask my doctor. but i am alone in this.

i need to feel her again.

hanging flowers.

my friends always hangs her flowers from
the tops of doorways. upside down so
the life from the stem
will drain into the colors of the petals.
and like a noose, the tape holds it there.

the air becomes cancer, drying its juices
slowly, though just slowly enough
to give it hope that
water could come somehow, that
my friend could see the cruelty of
slow, beautiful death and
instead place it right-side-up in warm sucrose water.
but flowers that die with promises of living again
wilt and dull and fall apart.

so when the air has finally sucked all
of the wet from each petal, the corpse hangs there still,
the smell of its ghost faint and
swimming around it.

crabbing.

over dinner
she talks about the shooting range
and how she sometimes aims at
targets in the shape of humans.

her husband chimes in.
their joke about swinging targets of terrorists heads
does not make me laugh.
i want to ask her if she knows
what a terrorist is.
i want to ask her how it's any different
from the bombs we drop.
i want to say
listen lady
if you think that shooting at
figures unlike your own
makes you different from people practicing
on targets that look a lot like you
you're mistaken.

but then i remember how
an hour earlier
i pulled red rocks and dungees out of the
ocean in cages and
split their bodies on the
side of a white bucket and
power washed their insides on to the grass.

and i don't say a thing but
could you pass the crab?

transplant poetry.

it comes off in patches.

it's the worst pain i've known
growing into myself.
so many bones broken
from word boulders
shot with hate catapults.
arms tired, muscles aching
trembling from peeling away
layers of expectation
and normal.
it comes off in patches
closer than my skin.
it rips, i bleed
and know that i will heal
in rough patches of scars.
the tissue will trail out
and remind me of the way stars
glittered the night
i asked God to break me--
the darkness where i said:
i don't need you to build me a path,
only let your light guide me
through dense fields of
honesty and invention,
veracity and falsehood
to touch the core of you.
to see the face of God.


---------------------

four.a.m.

I.
in the german language
there are three relative pronouns
der
die and
das—
masculine
feminine and
neutral
(respectively)
and there is no breathing reason
why the moon—der Mond—
is masculine
and the sun—die Sonne—
is feminine
but astronomy tells me:
that the moon shines only by
reflecting light from the sun
that the moon is only visible
because of the sun
that the moon would be just a crater
in the sky
without the sun.
and so it goes.

but
in this death darkness of night
that i’ve lived my whole life
i’ve seen nothing—
nothing!—
but the moon.

the moon wrote its own history
and that of the earth
reflecting shadows of war
(no peace!)
to outshine all the other dingy craters.
but,
the moon doesn’t lend heat
or generate light!
shadows spread longer, stain
the ground at midnight.

but,
what have i gained in
hearing the moon? or
accepting the moon? or
following the moon with my eyes?
nothing.
i have gained hazy alley rape
and retreating murky figures—
nothing.
i have gained gloomy cells housing
prisoners of conscience—
nothing.
i have gained Emmett Till and
Matthew Shepherd’s mangled bodies—
nothing.
i have gained a victim’s interrogation
at her rapist’s trial—

and my chest will hold no remorse
none.
for the moon when it dies.


II.
O, my good fortune!
it’s four a.m. and
in the east
the hovering grey sky dissipates—
the revolution
swirls splatters of purples and yellows
driving it away.

the sun is awake
and the coast is grasping for it,
praying it home
to warm the air.
to illuminate the sky.



---------------------

RomansTwelveTwo

i.
the ongoing struggle between
good and evil, between
god's will and human desire
has taken over my life.
it has consumed me to the point of
looking at a leaf falling
to the ground and
making me wonder
if god wanted that leaf to fall
or if our misuse and destruction of the earth
has so changed the temperature
of the air
that a cold mass
hit a warm mass
that wasn't supposed to exist
and created that tiny wind
and knocked that beautiful leaf
from the branch
god placed it on.

ii.
the reason your stomach feels sick
and you feel like crying
every morning
is because i am not what you want me to be
but i still
Still
always need your love--
Always.

iii.
my favorite bible verse is
romans 12:2, it reads:
do not conform any longer
to the patterns of this world
but be transformed
by the renewing of your mind
and i can't help but wonder
if you could find comfort in this.
that not all the world teaches you
is god's will.
that the beliefs that have been
engraved
in your brain
are wrong
and foolish
to believe that god disapproves of love
because when i lift up my hands
on the floor
alone
in my empty dorm room--
all i feel is love.
on my fingertips
and around each strand of hair
and deep in my bones
and underneath my toenails
because god Is love.