It is anticipated, expected and hoped for
But it bursts in without regard for plans
It does not excuse itself for disrupting whole lives
With its bold beauty,
Bonds of perfection, sweet
mercy, warm touch and
tears of both Joy and Sadness

Love is not convenient
It comes unexpectedly
It pulls me out of my skin
and back in
again
I’m gonna put it on

How did we get to

sending each other songs in French

with words like D’ifinies vendanges

and Des perles de pluie?

Has it been a short time or such a tres, tres longtemps?

To be honest it scares the hell out of me

and yet I am back riding in the seat of a fast car

next to you.

My eyes pop open at
2:23AM and thoughts of you
fill me.

I make a playlist of the
songs we’ve shared.

Add a few more that
I still want to give you.

I listen & all the notes are sweeter.

They fill me and
push all that was once
salty and dry
flowing like rivers
of healing from
the corners of my
eyes and soften the edges
of my soul.

It’s not supposed to be just notes
on a page.
It’s supposed to be a journey.

It’s supposed to lead from one
note to the next mixing harmony &
dissonance.

It’s supposed to be beauty
and sadness all tied up
in a golden thread of

the sacred.

Last April I felt so trapped that I sat in my mother’s rocking chair (the one she loaned me when you were born) and I wrote poems every day as if the words could somehow help me find a blank page to start over with.

This April is so different. How could I have known how different it was gonna be? You sat in your car seat yesterday for only the 2nd time in a month, with a mask over your face, and you named all the new things: new car, new house, new kitty, new school (the one you got to attend for only one month).

Tonight was the first time in a long time you said “I miss him,” followed by “I wonder if God knows when he’ll come back.” I gave the rocking chair back to my mom about a month before the pandemic. I just can’t seem to write poems this April. I wonder where the blank pages are.

So how’s it going really?

Has it hit you let you
run to the point where you
stop hunched over all out
of breath

And you suddenly feel
so empty that you don’t
even know what you
were running from?

Have the days run on
with you? Are they still
back there grabbing
at your heels like
memories you can’t shake?

Have you let yourself go
there?

To that place that
desperately burns its
way through the flimsy
melancholy
that you’ve been enduring?