Try Not To Take It So Hard

He asked for news from Leningrad.

I felt blood rise in my throat whenever I thought of that place,

of the shambling bodies who moaned in the alleyways,

of my Leningrad, starved and stolen.

“There were whispers of the salvation on streets,” I said.

Those whispers came from mouths gaping, groaning,

full of whatever they could scrape from the ground.

They ate the moss from stones, they stripped the bark from trees.

“Hitler holds Leningrad” like a child holds a found fledgling.

We felt his fingers tightening with intent to crush our avian bones,

and let Germany lick our blood from his palm.

I was no stranger to famine.

“The Soviets will soon break the siege,” but not before

the mother’s breasts shrivel and the baby is forced to bite.

I had heard whispers of a plumber who strangled his wife

and fed her to their children.

He asked for news from Leningrad, he handed me a loaf of bread.

She gathered the lights from the islands and sewed them into a dress,

It fluttered in the wind, though hems were holy and hapless.

The words they spoke were like those he had written in a notebook,

they were unfamiliar but nonetheless warm,

like soil in the summertime, where roots

lay their strange arms across the land, before the shovel rends them apart.

They are small, gangly, and though it doesn’t take much to rend them apart

it takes ages to get their stains from that old dress.

He figured that’s what they get for sinking their teeth through the root,

for their disregard, their endless consumption, their hapless

and hopeless days spent piercing their veins that did nothing but rest in the soil, warm

and unassuming. They took their alien blooms and pressed them in their notebooks.

He would have preserved her like that if he could’ve, pressed her between notebook

pages. When he needed her he would rend them apart,

letting the pulpy shreds fall to the floor. She would present herself to him, warm

and unassuming. She would still be wearing that island light dress.

This thought, he knew, was ill advised, hapless,

he wanted for nothing but to stretch his arms around her, fingers interlocking like roots.

It felt like the countryside had iced over, the warm soil where the roots

resided, dead, could’ve swallowed his body whole. All he’d leave was a notebook

of niceties, of garden layouts he would never plant, of his hapless

and scrawny limbs. In no time, the Earth would rend him apart,

returning his flesh to where it had come from. But instead he would dream of the dress,

made of light from the islands. He would dream of warmth.

The sun and moon never iced over. The shovels, the stains, the icy countryside would warm,

he would greet the sunny season with a new respect for the roots.

Hung on a hanger in the cellar doorway, the old dress,

and resting on the cellar stairs, the old notebook,

would serve as a reminder but never again rend him apart.

Sprouts in the soil would finally flower, no longer helpless or hapless.

Crawling out of bed to meet the mist had been so helpless and hapless,

before the countryside had been graced by the sun’s warmth.

But now branches bore fruits so ripe that he would rend their flesh apart,

no longer tearing thanklessly into alien blooms, strange roots.

The fresh pulpy pages of a new notebook

were filled with scrawl that was thankful to the Earth and soft lines of a dress that didn’t exist.

And those soft lines would fade as he stopped peering down the cellar stairs at the dress,

as he stopped brushing through the pages of the unplanned gardens in the old notebook.

if the branches had tugged at your crooked wings,

if the soil below had told the trees it needed

your feathers and your flesh and your intricate frame

to sustain it for another long winter.

The grass took no time before it hugged away your flesh

before it started to call your eye sockets home,

before it rendered your ventricles into food

for bugs who go unnamed but no longer go hungry,

their bellies nearly bursting with bile and blood.  

I had always wondered why I needed to hold you,

why I needed to carry your crumbling body in my hands,

why I needed to know your bones were safe

from the same world that had created you

all along and all at once.

Softness and sweetness had always found you

wrapped up in a cotton cocoon, colors

stitched together, edge kissing edge.

As you grew, the quilted comfort lifted,

it was growing far too short for your lolling legs.

Your bones were outgrowing your skin, organs

groaned and slid with newfound friction.

Quilted comfort no longer came to strangled sinews

you always called it a “fish city”

which I had forgotten and remembered all at once

when the Art-o-Mat pushed out a little box

that held a crudely crafted clay octopus. 

You held it in your palm and questioned

“five dollars for this?”

Despite the smile on your face when you first saw

the six wriggling arms,

the little “o” shaped mouth,

the surprised eyebrows that an octopus has never had. 

“Yeah,” I said,

Trusting the heated blanket not to sear your legs in the night

Trusting them not to rend your ventricles apart

Trusting the second story floor of your old farmhouse

Trusting the beams you hear moaning in the night

Trusting his hands around your neck

“white as a ghost,”

She could blend right into those cotton threads,

melt through the goose feather and they hay,

through the bedframe and the basement,

through the foundation and the topsoil

Unwell, pale, wrapped in a sheet

Exposed in a field stretching miles

Until it meets the edge of the woods

Like a kiss you weren’t expecting

But you don’t mind

Nothing moves except the tall grass

Swaying, slowly, softly

Moonlit

The lights glow just as bright

It doesn’t matter that you can’t feel your fingers

Down the old streets of Portland

It doesn’t matter that your tired eyes need rest

the crib crawler grows into the field follower,

who no longer crawls but instead walks the rows

of prematurely sewn beets.

Bountiful beauty, vegetables covered in soil

the long summer squalor turns to radishes,

that remind the field follower 

I’d be happy to oblige 

I was always swept up, anyway

my thoughts spilled onto the linoleum,

the color of cranberry juice 

I’m awake now, my friends say that I’m better 

my head doesn’t think those evil thoughts anymore,

this is the reason we carry it with us.

Learning from this heaviness will allow us,

to cast the yoke.

History will not prevent us from growth,

For the way we pluck your bounty

I know you’ve tried your best to grow

Strong and fruitful, green and glowing

You take your time to become what you’re meant to be

your deafeningly dull Mondays.

Your voice doesn’t have to say anything meaningful,

How to count my fingers and how to move

I’ve always known I’ve had 5 on each hand