first draft

At all hours I look at plants,

If I’m not looking, I am thinking about them.

My love of nature is expansive,

Intense as a love affair, 

Meeting in secret, just to stroke its leaves.

I am half garden/half girl.

Somedays I am half lonely/half depressed,

But those days are over, or at least minimized 

Because I have strongly stood up and said “no more.”

When I want to see flowers, I go in the backyard or stare

Around the living room at the miscellany of cut flowers 

Found at markets, brought home in huge bunches.

Outside they still grow, and I cut the coral roses and bring them inside,

Because of the romance and the scent and there must be a place for them 

Amidst all this green and clutter and attempt to build a home, a world, that is

Entirely, endearingly, my own. 

Outside I water with an old grey hose. I spray the bases of the roses, 

The purple flowering succulent, the orange, intoxicating marigolds,

As well as the pile of mint that grows out of control, like I do at times,

Wanting to blow up my life or run away. 

But those days are gone. Because mother is gone, not just in reality this time,

But she is out of my body. I was in bed for a decade, performing my own surgery

To rid myself of her, we were conjoined, I spent my life trying to save her,

While she abused me and our veins and sinew braided up into one giant 

Ball of terror. Even with this new freedom, I still can’t sleep. While in bed for a 

Decade, very few brought me flowers, so I make up for it now. I buy myself flowers.

I grow plants and love and cherish them, My house is full of life, my soul

Is beginning to fill too.

Another poem

TRIGGER WARNING

talk of suicide

A bird pooped on my wind breaker as 

We went through the Avery at the San Diego Zoo. 

I felt free there, among the caged animals, even 

The butterflies and their care free flying was

Like a testament to how you can stay free 

Within a cage. Remember how you let 

Our finches go? That was their death sentence

And you did not care. Your care turned inward

In a sort of self hatred. Not just sort of, but

Real, intense hatred, that I carry on with to this day.

I thought the animals in the zoo understood. 

I thought they knew what a hornets nest was like.

What thrown together dinners were like,

The greens for the giraffes, the pumpkin

For the elephant. I had next to nothing in

My life. I had a churning in my stomach,

A silent devil in my throat. And

Damn my eyes, not good at hiding

The tremendous pain I was feeling

At each moment. My eyes still

Are soulless even though I am my

Own savior. What an immense responsibility

Jiggling across my shoulders, the daily

Willing and choice to not poke my eyes out

And drop this goddamn steely weight. Free myself

From this cage of my body. Broken, in constant 

Pain, illness after illness diagnosed to somehow

Empower me to heal and let it go. No wonder my favorite

Poem is Seele Im Raum “It sat between my husband and

My children, a place was set for it—a plate of greens.

It had been there: I had seen it

But not somehow—but this was like a dream…”

But the animals at the zoo survived it, so maybe I could too.

The polar bear turning marsh green due to the mold and humidity.

I guess it’s better than dying on a melting iceberg, but I’m not quite sure.

Just like I am unsure in depressed moments that life is worth living.

Maybe being stranded on an iceberg would be better than being

Stranded soulfully in bed, showerless, half naked, begging the

Heaven above for sleep. I don’t believe in heaven and yet at moments I speak 

In my head to some strange being I hope can hold my hand and make

The bad things go away. Too much church, too much Jesus, too many lies, 

Funneled down my throat like whiskey or whipped cream.

My cage is old. My skin peels from crying too much. My body

Wants to stop breathing at night so I wear an oxygen mask like I’m going to war.

My cage is in pain. My cage is large although whats inside me is 

Quite small. Possibly too small to even matter. 

My cage has ink set into it in different shapes and colors, I do

Things to present myself as tough, the tougher the better as the world

Is so cruel, and I am so very deeply and widely sensitive. 

I can tell you how you feel faster than you can comprehend it.

I am like a sponge. Perhaps like a green polar bear, 

Dying in the heat of California. Maybe I am dying too. 

I know I am, but when? Each day I fight for death to

Be one day further away. At some point every person

On earth gives up. As Valerie June sings,

“How does it feel to know that you can’t go on anymore?” 

And I wonder if I am a savior or a destroyer. When I am 

In my body, as myself, I feel my strength. I feel my density.

I feel reliable and committed to life. 

When it is here, I doubt it all and I beg for my husband

To help me die. Understanding the incredible pain

I have has to be in to ask that question…

My heart just broke. But today feels like hell,

But I am still here. Caged in tight like

The giraffes and the Elands, perhaps not fully committed,

And yet I still persevere. 

Baby girl

A picture of me in the Florida trailer, at the age of four, eating a giant peach.

The old double wide we moved to

And the above ground pool,

Chickens and red ants nipping at my bare 

Feet as I shrugged toward the pool in

My bathing suit and yellow floaties.

Somehow I was a child once and I

Look back to Florida on a dim

Morning in California, as a 34 year

Old, still dealing with you on your cane

Rocker in my brain. The cane rocker

You held me in as a baby, how I wish

I knew it still. Not you, but the furniture,

You are a waste of oxygen.

But back to the grass and chickens. 

We lived with your sister and her strange family

We drank milk in tall glass tumblers with a diamond

Shape pattern, full of ice cubes since it was so

Unearthly hot. 

I loved the above ground pool, it was safe.

Floating in water and wading while the heat pummeled my

Forehead, not yet knowing that the trauma you 

Caused would still be in my forehead to this day.

The house had fleas. You told your sister, and she didn’t believe you.

Even though I was covered in so many, I developed a fever.

On the dining chair, as you applied calamine lotion,

You began to count, 1, 2, 3. With that crusty cool cotton ball

Dabbing against the bites. You counted over one hundred

Flea bites, and yet we stayed. How?

How could a mother do that to her child, and not

Thoughtfully leave and find somewhere new, somewhere flea-free?

A hotel? An apartment? But we were poor—that’s right, isn’t it?

And oh yeah, you didn’t give a shit about me. 

Did we sleep all together in one room? My mind gets fuzzy.

All the pain bundling into one ulcer, one pock mark I am 

Still trying to heal, like the scar I got from slicing my arm open, 

Just to let a little bit of the pain you filled me with escape. 

Then there were the June Bugs, flying through the house,

Their shells looking like a shinier version of the cosmos.

We all sat together, our families intermingled, when the thunder storms came.

Together in the center of the room like so many Bible studies I would waste my

Life going to. I am the god I see now, I am the divine deity. 

The middle-room-circle was a theory on how to avoid electrocution from lightning,

Due to the metal pilings and frame of the trailer.

Maybe we should have spent more time in reverent prayer for your sake.

And then one day you came rushing in the room with black 

Trash bags, telling us to stuff it, that we were kicked out. 

You blamed us, telling us it was because we didn’t like the fish your 

Sister made. What a thick burden for a star-eyed four year old to bare. 

And then we took the bus, and you used me to prove a point as we 

Hummed up America to South Dakota for one of the best things that ever

Filled my childhood of terror. Betty and Howard—grandma and grandpa. 

There I learned to garden, and still now I garden but I abandon it at 

Points where the memories are too shattering. And B. and H. are long 

Gone, and I like to think if they knew what you did to me, they would 

Have got on a plane and rescued me. I like to think there were

Some good people in my formative years. I like to think about the 

Oreos they would give me before church, dying my teeth a milky 

Grey. And the garden snakes that H. proclaimed harmless,

While my mother slithered through my life like a viper. And no one 

Noticed. And they said nothing.

One Perfect Rose

A single flow'r he sent me, since we met.

All tenderly his messenger he chose;

Deep-hearted, pure, with scented dew still wet--

One perfect rose.

I knew the language of the floweret;

"My fragile leaves," it said, "his heart enclose."

Love long has taken for his amulet

One perfect rose.

Why is it no one ever sent me yet

One perfect limousine, do you suppose?

Ah no, it's always just my luck to get

One perfect rose.

-Dorothy Parker