love, read, write

I feel like I've been insatiably in search of some kind of peace,
a settling. Waiting for sediment to fall. For petals to unfurl.
To reveal an earthen
figure - pure and unmarred -
as the fable goes. 

Am I stuck in the autumn of the evening?
It is so hard to tell when my reflection is water, waiting
to drum at the first raindrop. Or maybe
I am already there. That I am the water and
the raindrop, the smog and dirt -
a universe assembled,
not an ego discovered. 

But still I feel this figure, still clad in fog -
thick with thought. Sometimes, though,
her thin warble threads through the
mist on summer days, a voice I recognize,
strums me awake with the flit of a rare breath -
warm, beckoning. Or -

stupid. Later tonight I'll smell a bliss in the breeze and tomorrow
I'll wake up and feel bad, resheathed into a self
coiled tight. It might go on like that, forever.

That's probably enough.

My mother was a rather private person. This was not apparent to me as a child; I presumed that all mothers were like mine – reserved, secretive, sparing in her words. She was a ghost of a woman, floating in and out of my life, leaving only traces of her cedarwood perfume and the echoes of her heels clicking down the hallway of our apartment complex. 

Our conversations were always just short of something real. Occasionally, during dinner, she might ask, "how was your day?" and I would reply, "good," and after a pause she'd nod, "good, good." And we would spend the rest of the meal in silence. I would sit at the edge of my seat, a flower leaning in closer to the sun.

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