On the Death of Mercutio

I stand in my room and observe your little
spotted belly facing up, your

delicate wings limp and hanging

awkwardly upside down. 

I think of when I found you at Scott’s Pet Shop in a row of

little plastic cups.  You were a purple streak,

looking mighty and beautiful…

I adored you until you became a chore. The cat used to

stare, but even she’s lost interest in everything

but stretching out on the bed in a little patch of sunshine.

My head hangs and I begin to pace, a little procession for you. 

Guilty, I trudge to the living room with your bowl

where my dad is watching the news. He looks over

and I simply raise the vessel. Some stinky

water swishes out and your body moves,

but nothing like before. 

We go out to the backyard and he digs a hole before standing back.

I pour you out into the little grave and the sound of your skin 

smacking onto the dirt is quiet, but gruesome. 

I focus on your still-shining eye,

wide open like you’re surprised at this fate.

Dad pushes some dirt back over the spot.

I look up and he says “Amen”, tossing

the shovel aside and heading back into the house.

The sky is that green-gray like before a storm

And I stay there a little too long.

I feel a rush of wind against my back, and the

empty bowl feels heavy in my hand.

cicadas

It takes a whole cicada cycle for a broken heart to heal.
I know because I can still feel all the blood rushing out, making it a hollow shell.
Hear it crack, then shatter. Little pieces falling to the floor with tiny pings.

Almost drowned out by the blur of screaming outside.

A propped window reminds me I’m a blip while he gathers his shit. 

I hear nature raging, earth’s systems interlocking to keep up the slow spin. 

I hold my breath waiting for a satisfying slam of the door but it clicks closed quietly. 

I stomp over to open it again and bang it shut myself.

Then I stood there for a while. The car backing out 

was over quick, but the waves of wailing stayed for weeks. 

The static soothed me when I couldn’t pick a feeling to feel. 

Listening to the elusive insects scheming, planning 

their next lifetime. And starting to do the same.

For months I heard them buzzing and bumbling 

before burrowing themselves – you need to go deep. 

Stay there as seasons change, as time passes. 

And you don’t really do anything but mature. 

Or just age out of the pain, and maybe grow up a little.

I can describe the tissue and arteries fusing back together in my chest, 

but not without hearing their constant chaos emerging,

excited chirping as they start to surface and crawl about again. 

And I can too, after seven years.

Feeling the sun on my face, getting a hug from all the tiny noises saturating the air.

They leave their empty selves everywhere and do a slow squirm away. 

Armor that protected everything vital is just fragile skin that disintegrates. 

I see my heart’s shell in each one and stomp it out with a crunch, 

Getting a little more life back every time. The freshly born bodies

continue their commotion, and I love how the sounds overlap.

Poem

I am picking my nose in the elevator, and can feel my pulse spike as my eyes watch the numbers rise.

Time is never of the essence like when you’re picking your nose in an elevator.

I take a judgmental glance at my smeared, golden reflection -- a voluptuous jesus-- and I think

how awful, how disgustingly awful if someone were to see. It would cause

that same low feeling of guilt that comes when I think of breaking Cassie's arm when we were children. 

Or not really guilt but a, ‘if I hadn’t that, I wouldn’t this’ kind of thing, and it’s not as complicated as it sounds,

that small moment of being caught and embarrassed.

The ascent is rapid, and as I crook my finger I think, ‘Oh, if only I were a dog!’

Licking your butt in front of mixed company must taste like freedom.

I talk about that with Sarah a lot, not feeling free. But no matter what I say, 

she’s getting paid to tell me it’s all my parents’ fault. The doors slide open, and 

I am not caught so my thoughts stop.  This must be the definition of relief.

Everyday Revelations

Yesterday I wrote a poem about a dead moth

on a scrap of paper.  Describing the way the vein pattern

on its wings stood out against soaked cement,

pitying its little drowned head.

I put it in the pocket of my jeans and went

about the day.  A couple times I thought

of little broken legs floating around

the tiny body, and how to add them later.

Asleep in flannel pants I let it die a second time, 

but woke up itching to put those legs into lines.

This morning the same jeans were where I

left them on the floor-- but no piece of paper.

Not crumpled, not folded, not in either pocket.

Above the light switch in the front hall, there’s

a picture of my parents on their wedding day.  Hands

clasped and heads together, smiles bright, and hair brown.

Today I pass the kitchen on my way to the desk,

and as their temples gray and time runs out, 

they make separate meals in silence.

I sink into the desk chair, but I can’t recreate my

little moth there or on my computer screen.

The cursor flashes over and over, laughing at the foolish

girl who thought insects and love went on forever.

Maybe things like that are just as much work as they are miracles.
I should have guarded that little scrap of paper with

my whole heart, not tucked it away and expected it to return. 

I know my parents have made the same mistake, and wonder

how many times they’ve looked for old feelings

in the pockets of jeans on the floor.

The Dilemma of Quitting

two cigarettes are lonely in their pack.

an identical odd couple.

he hasn’t craved them

for three days now,

and they roll back and forth

when the drawer is shut or opened.

occasionally bumping against the other

in a brief, paper-covered kiss.

Shared at the DePaul Summer Writing Conference on 7/19/09

Tomatoes

My father is in the garden, wearing muddied cut off jeans. Trying to grow tomatoes like every year, he's tilling soil for nothing, digging holes too shallow for anything. Wide brown eyes squint into the sun and I watch wrinkles form as he stoops lower and lower.

Three weeks ago we buried my grandpa, and I imagine my dad in the graveyard turning over earth like a mad man, mumbling “Not yet. Not yet,” into his dirty hands.

Sweat slides down his tanned skin while the dog bounds across the yard, chasing the invisible. And maybe my dad is too, collecting misshapen green tomatoes year after year. His face sags and like a mask of age it says, “I’m old. I am so old.”

I can hear it from the porch where I’m comfortably cool, sipping tea and wishing I could lend some youth to him, whose shoulders curl in and fall forward. Is he thinking of his three sisters? His three daughters? His one successful tomato?

The orphan works, and I can see him in his suit that Sunday. Teeth chattering in the cold church, damp trail on his cheek, no gleam in his eye...

He hasn’t found grandpa among the fruits and weeds and comes back into the house. Silent, tomatoless. I push cold water into his stiff hands and understand that this is how it will be for a while.

He’ll grow deformed tomatoes, I’ll fill up battered notebooks, and we’ll both know what it feels like, waiting for your father to come back to life.