I saw you in a dream last night,
awake and alive and
doing just fine,
and I want to warn you
one more time
don’t fly so high
but
you have already reached the sun,
been scorched by
all you thought you could control,
been scorched by
youth and pride and
don’t fly so high
means nothing now;
I have your ashes to prove it.
-L.R.Y.
(5/23/22)
I don’t even know how it happened –
isn’t that the way
the worst arguments start,
with one or more people in the dark?
Accusations flung out,
haphazardly,
not sure if they’ll hit their mark,
but then –
bullseye!
The words make a connection,
and anger flows in
from every direction.
Wait, hold on…
just take a 3 – 2 – 1 and
breathe,
leave some time to sort out
the way you feel now.
What are we even yelling about?
Let’s back up,
redirect,
try to resurrect
the moment before this all started,
before the emotions have a chance to harden,
like a blood-red stain we’ll never get out.
Let’s have a redo –
you regret this, right?
Me too.
I’m sorry.
I love you.
Goodnight.
-L.R.Y.
(originally written 4/27/21)
I worry the thought
like a smooth stone
passed from palm to palm:
in the darkest point of night,
in the deepest part of my mind,
I always choose you.
I knew it then
and know it now,
how wrong a choice it is,
but still you persist
in a way you never actually did.
I worry the thought
like a smooth stone
passed from palm to palm:
I might only have been good enough
for someone like you,
someone that I talked myself into.
In the dead of night,
my subconscious wraps around you,
and I hope,
one of these days
when I wake,
it will have smothered you instead.
-L.R.Y.
(originally written 11/3/20)
{A tribute that I thought I’d lost.}
We talked about you for weeks
in a hushed and jumbled mix
of past and present tense,
and I wished for you to speak up –
for you to tell us you weren’t deaf
and
you weren’t dead.
Instead,
you were shut up inside yourself
in a way that I have never known you,
but I am realizing day by day
all the ways
that I have never really known you.
They gave me a pamphlet called
“Gone From My Sight”,
a matter-of-fact black-and-white
breakdown
of each day that you had left.
We passed it around,
made jokes about the order form in the back,
and laughed to keep from crying.
I used it as a bookmark,
not as guidance –
your life simply couldn’t be reduced to
a solemn list of
all the ways your body betrayed
you in that bed.
Watching you slip away
has left me
with an overwhelming sense of
being homesick all of the time.
I hear your voice inside my head,
and I know that once it fades,
the silence will never seem so loud.
But for now,
this will have to be enough –
celebrating your life
with the people who knew you best,
and loving you as fiercely
as you loved all of us,
and I can’t remember if I told you, so
thank you for helping me grow up.
-L.R.Y.
(8/29/14)
Our expectations
exceed our effort;
it’s been true this whole time,
but now there’s no denying it.
We limp along
and when someone falls,
the crowd tramples overtop,
screaming that it’s our right.
Eight months ago,
we assured ourselves
that we were better than Italy,
better than everyone, but
KEEP AMERICA GREAT!!!
is the emptiest slogan
of the modern times,
suitable only for memes
and not suitable for children.
We are at war with ourselves
while the world watches.
Our expectations
exceed our effort,
and the only thing we do together now
is fail each other.
-L.R.Y.
We drove for hours to get there,
to get to the middle of nowhere,
with no driveway
and no electricity,
but when we made love by lamplight,
you held on like all you needed was me.
Later,
much later,
you froze me out,
and all I could think about
was that I should have burned us to the ground
by the lit fuse of
your kerosene lamp.
-L.R.Y.
Our last moments together
feel like a tragic misunderstanding now;
I thought that you were high
as you wiped sleep from your eyes,
so I turned around and walked out.
It wasn’t the last time I saw you,
just the last time I saw you alive,
and I wish that I had tried
to see you,
simply you,
underneath it all.
Instead,
what I remember most
is finally getting that call,
dropping the phone
and driving for miles,
but not fast enough.
It was never enough –
not enough time,
not enough strength,
not enough love.
I have enough regrets
to last a lifetime,
but none of them are a lifeline
that will ever bring you back.
We control what we can right now:
bandanas on our faces,
even if we can’t breathe;
winter gloves on our hands,
even if it’s seventy degrees outside
(because who can find latex ones anymore);
mindful distancing between ourselves and
people we don’t know,
and sometimes even people we do know.
But
it still feels like
too little, too late.
It still feels so far out of our control:
the people who won’t cover their faces
even though it’s now a law;
those with free fingers,
touching every available surface in sight;
limits on the amount of food we can bring home
even though we’re supposed to stay home
as much as possible.
We try to remember
to wash our hands all day long
until they are raw.
We try to remember
not to touch
our nose
our mouth
our eyes,
even if it kills us –
because it actually might kill us.
We try to remember
that this can’t last forever.
Until it’s over,
we just wash our hands again
so they are clean
while we wrestle for control,
six feet apart.
Selective quarantine and
three crazy dogs;
no one has been eaten yet,
and we are keeping the peace.
I mean,
it’s only been two days
and we have to last two weeks,
at least,
but I told you
we couldn’t get married
until we lived under one roof,
so I guess
this is a good first step,
especially since you brought me
breakfast in bed.
You are
my earliest memory,
the piece of the puzzle
that changed me in an instant.
I made up names for you
before you were born,
and told you stories
from the vast imagination of a 3-year-old.
Later,
I created games
where you were a martian in a skirt
or a pretty pretty princess,
and for a while
I could bribe you
by claiming you were my best friend.
It wasn’t until years later
that I realized
it was the truest thing I’ve ever said.
-L.R.Y. (2/2/20)
lindley rose 