ZOË/OH

loved divinely, possessively, unfalteringly, intensely, singularly. I have been loved as no other, loved forever, loved to distraction, to delusion, to destruction. I have been loved with conditions with charisma with correction. I have been loved untidily and unkindly. I have been loved without affection and with only. I have been loved for who I am and who I am not. I have been loved without knowing the difference   in love without bounds and without boundaries. I have been loved ruthlessly. And if you think love without ruth cannot be love, I wonder if you’ve been loved before. And how?

I haven’t been sure so I ask the pendulum that Heather and I bought together to open our chakras after dinner at Departure. I light a tall, white candle burning lavender and ylang-ylang. I cup the bloodstone in my warm hands to catch heartbeats as they drum and drift off I say this for yes and that for no (keep breathing) and hold the thing in thumb and finger, steady as, balancing above an open palm. The stone holds. I straighten and pull the breath down the length of my spine. Open, open. The pendulum swings.

I’m backing out of my space in a full torso twist when I feel the sweep of my own soft skin against my face. The warmth in simple touch. A flood of eyes roll in waves before me, gazing ones, yearning ones, downcast and crying ones, the ones lit up with hot fire. Blue and black, green and gray with lashes light or dark, short or long under brows heavy with concern or stretching skyward in ecstasy. What luck to have loved so much and so often. What sweetness to have lived tucked in between so many people’s dreams, to show them whoever it is they’ve always wanted, if only for a little while.

I am not so talented at staying up late, I'd rather take a page from A Thousand  Mornings or Why I Wake Early and sip tea slowly as I scribble, watching the east, rapt and waiting for that first wash of color, the sun creeping over the shoulder of Mt Hood and all her crouching foot hills. I keep those quickening morning moments, string them up to dry, mortar crush the pestle petals, funnel into mason jars and store by season and color about the house to give out as medicine for what ails. A June peach to lift a heavy heart, deep December violet to temper the temper, March's wet blue  to cool the anxious nerves, a streak of magenta from July to send a thrill flushing through. 

This isn't the Beyonce song or a volleyball named Wilson or TV island reality. This isn't what 3 things you would take to be stranded. This isn't crash guilt or coming home  alone from the war. This is the inside  of a dark room, a closet,  or a brightly lit bath tub. This is a stranger's apartment.  We call it surviving because some of us don't.

I don’t need a knife tattooed on my body, these hips are guns and magic, hear them bang with every step.

I’m relieved to hear you’re finally drawing some cups after all those swords, sword after sword. In January you pulled cards for every month and this one’s is the mother of cups and when I think of you I pull the ace of cups and anyone worth their salt in poetic devices knows a cup in a poem is never just a cup and this poem is filthy with cups, though I won’t lie to you, there is struggle in cups, I keep writing this poem, keep saying cups, delaying that ethereal period so I don’t end with a half full one, or a fully tipped over one, but this cup is here to last, to keep the poem going when it drags and disappoints so I can show it to you, years from now and say we started so hopefully, so dreamy with opportunity and we knew we would slog at some point and another, but we still raised our cups together, intertwined we bravely toasted, we muttered some incantation and we drank.

Over breakfast I am reading poems trying to find a beautiful one to send to you. The problem is, I don’t read beautiful poems or write them, really, I prefer haunting ones, acerbic, take a look in this sad fishbowl ones. And you are all Nayyirah Waheed, all r.m. drake, all look how well I know myself and doesn’t this shred of hope glimmer as it grows? But I’m mourning every dead iris Louise Glück ever planted and poor Emily Kendal Frey still stuck eating her sandwich with too much mayonnaise.

I’m looking up from my feet for the first time since the snow fell-- dumped is more like it--eight days bundled up in your house or mine bemoaning the heat bill while a newborn, an old man freeze to death in a Trimet bus stop, in the turkey field taking one last trespassing ramble into the woods behind Kim’s house brushing up the slopes of Christmas trees, the old outhouse door swinging wide in gusts of wind fit to freeze tears as they fall. We don’t belong here digging caves in the snow for warmth. We are wet water people, splashers and puddle-hoppers, hydroplaning enthusiasts! Send us your rain, your rivers, your landslides your long months of slate gray sky. Anything but this, this snow.