We never had any trouble expressing our anger and frustration. Expressions for those dark and consuming feelings came freely and without restraint. We had at least three generations of that, what do I call it—habit? characteristic? (nothing fits)—running through our veins. These weren’t merely things we were taught or things that we learned by example but traits we sadly inherited because a bitter root had been ingrained in a tree that was too old and twisted.
When it came to things like love and happiness—good feelings—we had no ways of expressing ourselves besides endowing others with things that could be measured monetarily and were therefore limited to that cold, concrete value, because that was the only way we knew of—that was the way we were taught and that was what we learned from our predecessors.
Love was just a cold, colorless lump we didn’t know how to handle; we never quite knew what to do with it.
So we were definitely never taught how to physically love each other, even if we knew that that thing we call love must reside within each of us, somewhere, asking to be spread and reciprocated. We didn’t know how to move, how to encircle arms in embraces, how to clasp and lock fingers together, how to kiss cheeks and lips, how to nuzzle noses and necks—we knew none of that.
I’m trying, though; I’m trying to make flowers bloom where there were ostensibly none before.
china white puzzled me—
she was some very fine porcelain,
someone more fragile than I,
(more delicate than I’d imagined)
broken and blue.
how do I arrange these jagged pieces
when I’m missing a few
(the rest are broken)
and never had any idea what
the original picture looked like?
met one time, two times, three times, many times
and said goodbye, definitely indefinitely
make no plans to meet
which means
no promises to keep.
JANUARY 14, 2012
Parents, friends’ folks, aunts, uncles, cousins, teachers, strangers,
I search their faces,
My eyes follow wrinkly maps beneath their eyes, on their hands and palms,
Gaze grazing over receding and graying hairlines and softened flesh that has lost its glow,
Looking for tell-tale signs
(Like a faded smile, a suppressed laugh)
Of who they surely must’ve been
Once upon a time.
(Sometimes I can see remnants of
Who they were
When they were
Just kids
Like you and me.)
