A gift.

This is a gift,
And it comes with a price,
She said.
Who is the darkness,
And who is the light.
Breathe carefully,
You're holding my last cache captive.
My simple faith and real release
Both dance just at my fingertips.
I see it everywhere, you know.
A sack-clothed figure stooped over a bus bench,
A gold and crimson flash.
He crooks a narrow finger at me
And I keep shaking and smiling my head away.
I breathe carefully.
Keep watch closely.
February's crows beat their black wings at my doorstep
But I keep my hands clean.

Too.

Your eyes,
They could be mine.
They could be anyone's, really.
But they're yours.
The minutes and hours, they tick by -
One day closer,
One week closer
To what?
To February?
To next month or next year or
What?
For it all to end, and start all over again?
Brushing off into cartoon land,
Following a racetrack round and round...

Sometimes I don't recognize my own face in a mirror.
But I see it everywhere in a crowd.
Sometimes I see your face in my dreams,
In the water,
In clouds and grass and the part of a car that curves over the tire.
Every car.
Every word.
Your word-face crying over me,
Spilling letters and numbers from your eyes.
It's all just the words, anyway
The words and the while
The ghost and the gaslamp rooftop.
The words all fit together like puzzle-pieces and they keep me
Together.

I need to sing, you know.
I need to breathe and pray and throw myself like paint,
Beating my wings against my own glass windows
Maybe I unravel, a little sometimes.
Sometimes more, sometimes less.
But always at least a little.
Won't you walk in the park with me?
Won't you go with me,
Too?

Perfect.

It's everything, really.
It's all the things that were,
And all that could have been.
Everything I was
and all the things I'll never be.
It's a world of possibility that's closing in on me
And my struggle to cross gracefully
A raging red giant
Flinging the vestiges of my violent youth out
Into space,
Into nothingness.

It's memories only half remembered
Moments I'll never have again.
The things we expected that
Never came to be.
Or things we never dreamed,
Somehow now held close.
It's the distance.
Or, the suffocating closeness.
It's the terrible idea that maybe,
Just maybe I can accept and transform
All of the guilt and loneliness and regret into the feeling that
For once,
And all,
I am enough.
I do enough.
I see and hear and give and love enough.
That there is no better to be had here,
And that the things I have right here,
Right in front of me,
That even I myself -
Am perfect.
Enough.
Whole.
All.
Both.

Enough.

High Tide.

I watched the sand get swept away
This morning
With Winter breathing heavy down my neck.
She heaves her chest in great sighs of frustration
Blows at the beaches
Chasing Summer's last errant children off.

If I listened, just a little
If I paid more than passing attention
I might hear her whispering anger and
She might sweep me off my feet, too.
I turn my back, keep walking East before
Winter brings the waves that crash,
And call me home.

Would.

Silken thread weaves through my fingers
Brushes their tips,
Draws over my palm.
I breathe small ripples into the water,

Fascinated.

Rapt.

I sit stone-still and watch the crimson wine bloom up
Breathing it's own life out slowly
Soft and warm.
Soft.
Like the rare shade of sunlight you can only see through flower petals.
It glitters, and then is gone.

I'm left here with a stinging sense of loneliness,
My only comfort stolen
Beautiful in it's betrayal.
If I could open my chest
Spill my soul out on the ground
And dance my bare feet in its greying faith,
In God's laughter,
Splashing dreams and gravity everywhere...

I would.

Oh, how I would.

Fuck your chart.

How.
Dare.
You.
How dare you come here with your pile of paperwork,
While I'm caring for my many patients
While I'm doing my Work.
God's work, as my father once called it.
How dare you come and ask me to explain myself.
"Where's the chart?"
I didn't tear it apart.
"Where's the chart?"
I gave report, she would have been responsible for it.
"Where's the chart?
Where, you ask, where is the chart?
I don't know what you are looking for,
What piece of paper, but I know that
I gave that woman the finest care.
I made her feel loved, in a moment of deepest sorrow.
I was her shepherd through the world's deepest pain:
The grief of a mother for her young son.
I held her toddler daughter so she could cry openly.
I held this stranger on my shoulder and wept with her
I heard her pride in naming him herself.
I listened carefully for his heartbeat time and time again until,
When it finally stopped and I knew he wouldn't feel any more pain
I gently cast his footprints in plaster,
The only proof she would ever have that he was hers
And hers alone.
The only thing in her world that she might call her own.
And so, no.
I didn't write much down.
I didn't chart vital signs so meager.
I didn't cross my t's or dot my i's.
But I was a damn fine nurse, that day.
So put a fucking price on that.
After all, what is the code for "sorrow"?
For "lonely"?
How much should grief cost?
And, had I spent more time charting
and less time caring...
Would it pay more?
I am no man's whore,
No rule-following automaton
I am a nurse.
A lady with a lamp, lighting a way through the dark and confusing
Web of the human response to disease.
The *human* response.

So fuck you.
Fuck you and your chart.  You're lucky I filled out as much as I did.
No, I can't remember what happened to that piece of paper a month ago.
But I will always remember that baby's name.
And the day that I made a real difference in someone's life and someone's death.

What will you remember?

Metal III

Seatbelts buckled, safety bars locked. 

The brakes are loose and we're on our way up the first hill of this 

Rollercoaster.

Soon we'll let fly and 

Hang on tight

And scream and laugh all the way down

To some end we cannot see, but 

We know we'll be together.

We know we'll be safe.

Loved.

Warm.

And happy.

Really, really happy.