Tag: relationships

Every Single Time

Every single time 

laying claim proves fraught

Belonging can feel like battle
without a winner

Familiarity think it be knowing, 
says go here, x marks the spot

Not home, not ours, not only
a place

where arrival meets departure

every single time

guessing that here and mine go hand
in hand
Praying that here and mine stick
together like sisters

But no
just passing fancies
strangers who stay that way
here, not mine

Not from here
familiar stranger
comer and goer
I am strange and familiar
I know

every single time

*Original draft, Jan 1, 2022

Journal Leaks

Brown skinned left hand with gold wedding band lower left corner rests on bottom edge of two notebooks/journals. Top journal has Klimt painting of women angels dressed in gold. Brown leather journal underneath.
A Piece of Scarf

I've made you a piece of scarf.

Yes, a piece of scarf.
It's blue and bluish in a
crisscross kind of pattern I've just learned
called a basket weave.
Except it's not a basket
and I didn't weave it.

It's a piece of scarf.
Quite striking actually,
interesting at the very least.

And yes, I suppose it is only the very least
a piece of scarf you can never wear,
you can never wrap around your neck
or drape over your shoulders.
It's only a piece, mind you.

A piece of scarf
for you, though
a token of my affection
a hint of warmth and coziness
that I can't quite deliver in full.

A piece of scarf that is visible
in its incompletion,
whose potential shows up
in thousands of missing stitches.   

(November 2017)

    
Es hilft nichts
  sagt sie
Da ist nichts zu machen
   sagt er
Das wird nichts mehr
   sagen sie

Nichts.
ist nichts
wird nichts
hilft nichts

Eben. 

(Februar 2018)
I amI might be
a routinea regret
a habita challenge
a dutya mess
an appeasementa hassle
a compromisea detriment
a reality checka deal breaker
a mismatchan assignment
an Americana mistake
a riskan exhaustion
a volatilitya strain
an accusationan impossibility
a dismissala reminder
an exclusiona dread
an expensea warning
a lossa vulnerability
a gaina chore
an ambivalencean anger
a reasona resentment
an excusea departure
a disappointmentan absence
a draga damage
a mixed baga cost
Identity calculus

(November 2020)

It’s the Relationships

Yes, you have heard this before and maybe you preach it on your own time. It’s the relationships that matter and keep me engaged on social media.
It’s the relationships to people and their ideas that compels me to stay up later than I ought to, to leave longer blog comments than I originally intended, to delight in good news that a friends are sharing not only with the world but also with me.
It’s the relationships that ideas enable. When we each bring a bunch of our ideas to the table and have a potluck, we celebrate a conversation.

Two Twitter friends just sent news of their kids doing brave and meaningful stuff and it pleases me to respond and share in that moment of pride. Those are the relationships I mean.
I dug into a long post about the challenges of teaching writing to “today’s students” and I found a statement that made all the difference for me: “many of the reasons that children fail at their pursuit of ethical lives must be placed at our feet.” The relationship between the idea and my experience is formed almost immediately. I mean these relationships too.

Every hour that I spend on here is costly and worth it. I have these many relationships to thank for that.