Polyvore

many little deaths by katsty featuring Zimmermann

Mennonites

Grandmother, Edna Benner Styer, died yesterday, April 15, 2009, at 5:15PM.

I do not know what this means yet. I have many memories of holidays at my grandparents' house on Cowpath Road, Hatfield, PA. I noticed recently that I inherited her cowlick at the front of her hairline, above her left eye. She gave my father the palest skin, and he, in turn, gave it to me. I have been disconnected from her for most of my life, as my parents moved to Indiana, then Massachusetts, from Pennsylvania, before I was born, and raised me and my brother there. She always sent birthday packages with chocolate covered pretzels and Landis treats, I did not send enough Thank You cards. I keep thinking that this is simply how life works, it ends. Hers did not end unexpectedly.

I do not know what this means yet.

Secret Life

I am incorrigibly nostalgic. The worst of it is that regardless of the finality of a relationship, or the time that passes between the end of it and the present, I always long to return to it, to have it again. I am nostalgic regardless of quality; no matter that during it I was miserable, constantly convinced of the wrongness between us. Those I want again were the most urgent, and also the most tenuous. The only way we knew to communicate properly was to stop using our voices and use our mouths and hands instead. And then of course, the things at which we were not good, understanding, agreeing, and laughing, were almost entirely forgotten.

Listen
by Charles Simic

Everything about you,
my life, is both
make-believe and real.
We are like a couple
working the night shift
in a bomb factory.

Come quietly, one says
to the other
as he takes her by the hand
and leads her
to the rooftop
overlooking the city.

At this hour, if one listens
long and hard,
one can hear a fire engine
in the distance,
but not the cries for help.

just the silence
growing deeper
at the sight of a small child
leaping out of a window
with its nightclothes on fire.

Ink

xi
Michael Ondaatje

Life before desire,
without conscience.
Cities without rivers or bells.

Where is the forest
not cut down
for profit or literature

whose blossoms instead
will close the heart

Where is the suitor
undistressed
one can talk with

Where is there a room
without the damn god of love?

This Poem Made Me Think Of You.

Lines for Painting on Grains of Rice
by Craig Arnold

You are the kind of person who buys exotic fruits
  leaves them out on the counter until they rot
You always mean to eat them     sometimes you rearrange them
  rousing over the bowl a cloud of tiny flies

      &

How do they balance    the parrot who chews a walnut
sideways     holding it up in his right foot
the owl perched on a just-lit lamppost
  scratching behind its ear     like a big dog

      &

Your pencil eraser wears down long before the point
  for every word you write     you rub out two

      &

Where the slice of toast rested     the plate is still warm
  a film of fog     little points of dew

      &

Love is like velocity     we feel the speeding up
  and the slowing down     otherwise not at all
the more steady     the more it feels like going nowhere
  my love I want to go nowhere with you

      &

I cannot bring myself to toss the cup of cold coffee
you set down by the door on your way to the taxi
all day I have sipped it     each time forgetting
your two tablets of fake sugar     too sweet

Apart

I am struggling with this separation as I struggled with crushes on boys in high school and college. I am craving your attention, desperately hoping that you will notice me and talk to me. But as it was then, my signs are too subtle and some only exist in my head. That is, it seems I’d rather that you could just read my mind and know exactly when and how you should communicate with me. Maybe I am still getting used to this, but I am feeling like we never should have embarked on this remedy for our plateau of a relationship. I want you back with me, I want to spend every evening with you and sleep with you and just hope, pray now and then, that we’ll find our way to some place like where we began.

Last night I called you about picking up my coffee table in Coraopolis and I very badly wanted to ask you to come with me. I knew I couldn’t for the sake of our separation and so, when you offered before I asked, I immediately refused—we’ve set out to accomplish something, so we ought to stick with it and find out what we’ll be accomplishing, in the end. I've been trying to convince myself of this, but rather than ease my ache to be with you, it makes me frustrated and upset. I’m almost sure we should complete these two weeks apart, but should we really see each other on the weekends? I’m afraid that will be confusing and will erase all that we worked for in the business days before.

Perhaps I should think of this as a piece of writing. I have always put a work-in-progress away for some time and then returned to it, looking for something new I hadn't noticed before, an error in spelling or a sentence that needs rearranging; sometimes, even whole paragraphs are eagerly raising their hands like students, begging to be placed on the third page, instead of the last. What’s different is that I’ve never felt so desperate to return to the work, or excited to find what I may have missed. Usually, I am scared of it.

All my love.

Dear Marlon.