Fingers flutter flickering

Eyes uplifted

Mouth muttering

Pleas go unheard

To anyone listening

Maybe even that deity

She isn’t sure exists

Save me from this

Pain is overwhelming

Just make me safe again

Make my mind calm

Be a balm upon my weary soul

Darkness surrounds

Sounds are drowned out

By the calm after the storm

Quiet descends

Chaos ends

Angels come in many forms

And if in the time that's gone

I forget you and move on

Worry not, my faithless lover

You still live in both line and song

I hear you in the lyrics

I see you in the shows

I'd forgo all media

But you know how that goes

Every so often I cry

And feel the loss anew

There was such a time

When I saw only you

My heart is bound with wire

And walls protect it thus

But I have faith that it will heal

From the memories of us

There's the kind of inward seeking

That is reflective navel gazing

Straining the bounds

Of getting up and over

You find yourself

Doing the rounds

Months later

Trying to uncurl

As you bring your eyes forward

Letting your body unfurl

Stretching muscles you'd

Long since retired

Do feminine wiles expire?

Coy can be learned

When one has incentive

After being burned enough times

Don't flatter my quirks

And feed me lies

That no longer works

In spreading my...

Sigh

Do I even have to say it?

Savor my levity

Don't waste my time

This girl's big on brevity

As there's continued uncurling

Soul tired, but still unfurling

And I, sorely needing to breathe

Get up and brave the air once more

I only smoke when super stressed. Historically, anyway. I've managed not to pick it up again in the last few years. But just barely.

Inhale.

Exhale.

The repetitive action soothes me. It's the same as yoga breathing, but the first hit of nicotine and smoke to the lungs...well, that's the sweet spot, right?

Inhale.

Exhale.

Blowing out that first deep drag is still the most soothing feeling I can imagine.

Turns out, even a Menthol Light can't give relief anymore in the aftermath of a broken heart. Sweet red wine hits the spot now. And yoga.

Inhale.

Namaste, dickhead.

Exhale.

I’d been anticipating a relaxing day at the park, but the day took an unexpected turn after I met her.

She seemed nice, but when I told her I had to leave, she became upset. Really, really upset. I tried to explain that I had to run errands, but I was cut off when a menacing man suddenly slapped duct tape over my mouth and threw me over his shoulder. Stunned and finding myself tossed in a backseat, I tried to make sense of what was happening. Then things cleared up.

“Thanks, Daddy! Now my friend can stay and play!”

A cigarette and coffee whilst watching the sun come up in Tahiti is so amazing that I wish I’d written it on a bucket list, just for the satisfaction of crossing it off. Even with my life in shambles, there was peace in this moment. I inhaled and thought about the last twenty-four hours…

My wedding. I was halfway down the aisle when I looked at my husband-to-be's face and my life flashed before my eyes. Not the events in my past, but what awaited me in my future. With an abrupt about-face, I turned tail and ran past the shocked expressions of the guests who came for a wedding and stayed for a show.

Was it tacky to make use of the tickets to our honeymoon destination? Probably. But I needed to think, and the incessant ringing and pinging of my phone was starting to make my brain hurt. I turned it off and told the limo driver we’d hired to take us to the reception to head in the direction of the airport instead. And with that decision made, I'd felt calm for the first time in months…though I did have a moment of hysterical giggles when the TSA agent frisked me in my voluminous wedding gown. Thankfully, everything we needed for our trip was already in the car and I was able to change out of the fluffy monstrosity in a bathroom near the gate. I left my dress on a hook on the back of the stall door and felt utterly unencumbered when I walked out to await my flight.

I looked around now at my tropical anti-honeymoon. This wasn’t a bad place to think, really. Palm trees swayed in the breeze and the ocean sparkled under the rising sun. The feeling like I was slowly being choked to death was finally starting to abate. My now-ex wasn’t a horrible guy, but when I thought of him in conjunction with passion and love and a soft place to land - not to mention fidelity and loyalty - my mind went blank. It’s amazing what we can talk ourselves into when we fear loneliness.

I’d never been alone and now I was. It felt amazing. Free.

A shit-storm of epic proportions awaited me back home, but the idea of walking in to an apartment devoid of another human being made it bearable. From the rather graphic texts sent this morning, I'd gleaned that he’d moved out. Apathetically, I considered telling him what he suggested wasn’t anatomically possible, but that would just poke the bear. And that I did not want to do.

He’s the kind of man who gets pleasure out of making others suffer in small ways, without them even realizing it. Death by a thousand cuts. He’d build me up and then slowly withdraw his approval, only to give it back to me in tiny portions. A slow-moving roller coaster of highs and lows that left me in tears more times than I could count. I’d do more and more to get back to a place where he thought I was wonderful...and he’d withhold those words, dangling them over my head and I’d jump and jump and never reach them. Innocuously insidious, that one. Too bad I had this epiphany right as I was walking down the aisle.

The face I saw when I looked back before running out of the church wasn’t hurt. It was furious. I smiled at that and took another drag. He never expected me to find my backbone. Live and learn, right?

I wonder...if you've never known true love, can you miss it?

I think you can.

My mother's mother. We called her Granny and I loved her fiercely. A true southern lady, but man, did she have some big brass balls.

I am often told I am just like her. And I am to some degree. Southern charm and grace on the outside, inappropriate curiosity and often no filter on the inside. Not nearly as open and brave as she was, though.

She and my grandfather were childhood sweethearts. They even had the same birthday. He was seventeen and she was thirteen when he saw her up in a tree and said, "Someday, I'm going to marry that girl." This was the late 1920s. He married her in 1935.

I tried to get married on their birthday, as a tribute to them both. We were a day late in getting the license and had to settle for July 22nd instead. I was almost inconsolable.

They had a kind of love so rare you don't even wish for such a thing, but hope you at least get close. Cupid himself was probably an active voyeur. She was the outgoing life of the party and he was the quiet, refined professional. They complemented each other. Peas and carrots or some such nonsense.

This was a woman who never met a stranger. There is an infamous tale of the time she encountered a woman in a public bathroom. The woman had very long nails that curled due to their length. My grandmother stopped her, and in what I can only imagine as morbid curiosity cloaked in southern pardon-me, she asked her how she managed to wipe. That story gets told to every newcomer to the family.

Her driving was infamous. This little red-haired woman (she kept up the red for a long time after nature took it from her) drove like a maniac. God help you if you got in her way. To this day, I echo her in calling people turkeys when they don't agree with me that ten miles over the speed limit is the right way to interpret the law. I use it a lot to joke with people, too. It was not even something I noticed until my mom pointed it out. This was followed by the now-familiar, "You're just like her!"

She kept gum in a little silver cup on a shelf for me. I've probably gone through hundreds (thousands?) of five-piece packs of Wrigley's Spearmint gum in my lifetime. And when the flavor ran out, I'd go get a cough drop for the crunch and a minty kick. I still like crunchy gum. Try a Starlight mint and Big Red gum. You're welcome.

When she went into the nursing home, she gave me her car. It stank of her Capri cigarettes, and to this day I can't see one of those weird, skinny little cigarettes and not think of her and smile.

When she died, she left me--out of all of her children and grandchildren--her wedding ring. This is my most prized possession. When my grandfather died in 1980, she basically died with him. She impatiently waited sixteen years to join him. And while she still smiled and laughed and loved, her soul was missing its mate. She was ready for the reunion and refused more treatment for the cancer.

Since I cannot have children, that ring will go to my niece. The one I fully expect to be arrested at Mardi Gras when she's eighteen, and as such, I'll have to put down some strict conditions on bequeathing it to her. She's only two, so we have time to iron out the details.

I have a shitty memorial tattoo for her on my wrist. My ex-husband got a tattoo gun and I was young and dumb. I want to get it fixed or lasered off and done properly, but every time I think too much about it, it seems like I'd be removing her from me. I can't do it.

But what she really left me, and what I'd love to be able to hug her neck for now that I know what a gift it was? A sense of knowing who I am. A take-no-prisoners approach to being me. A sense that if you don't like me...well, bless your heart, that's a personal failing on your part. A knowledge that there are men out there who will love you fiercely and look fondly upon you and laugh when you show your ass. This is what gets me through the loss of love, and what allows me to roll with the punches.

And to know what I am missing.

I went to Paris to forget.

What better way to slough off an old life than to jettison it from a plane crossing a great blue divide? That was the idea anyway.

He was unexpected. Lingering glances turned into not-so-by-chance meetings. Afternoon tourist delights turned into evenings spent under glittering stars outside the city. Selfies with the Eiffel Tower turned into artistically blurry black and white shots of his skin and mine against the backdrop of rumpled sheets.

Sweet nothings in my ear weren't nothing after all. I was guarded against effusive declarations - they usually come with the first bloom of a relationship, but then they fade away. There's much to be said about a man who isn't careless with tossing around words and feelings.

I didn't want to leave, but the idea of going back to my "real life" loomed over me. That's such a silly phrase...life can be whatever you make of it. And so I stayed. My family worried that I'd lost my mind and maybe they were right.

But I'd rather be lost in possibility than found in misery.

This Midwestern housewife and I had nothing in common. A love of family, perhaps, but we weren't blood. Her people were hardy German and Scandavavian stock. I know this because one year I did her genealogy as a present.

By the time I met Geraldine, I'd been through a litany of steps. Step-grandparents, aunts, uncles, cousins, and several step-parents. I figured there was no need to bother with the new set as either my father would divorce their daughter, or more likely, their daughter would divorce my father.

I wasn't prepared to love her. But she wore me down with unwavering acceptance and never invoking the 'step' part of our relationship. She understood that I loved her and that I just didn't show it in demonstrative ways. No one knew I had autism back then. But I was still hers and she understood me. I think the way I'd cry at the end of our visits clued her in that I cared.

We all knew of her troubles with Hepatitis C, contracted through a blood transfusion decades before. A drug trial at the Mayo Clinic put her in remission, but her body was just too tired. 

My brothers, sisters-in-law, and I drove straight through from Texas to the frozen Midwest to say our goodbyes right before Christmas.

The funeral wasn't exactly somber; it was a celebration of her life carried out in quiet prairie fashion. A picture montage was set up and I couldn't look away from the vital, energetic woman she used to be. Pictures are a thing for me. While words carry weight, pictures capture tiny slivers of a life. Moments that will never happen again. There's magic in pictures. The one of her and my grandfather dancing the 'longest married couple dance' at my youngest brother's wedding two years ago was one that hit me hard. They looked thrilled to be in each other's arms. That is what love looks like.

When the service was over, we moved to the burial site, and stood in rows, huddled together against a blustery lake wind as we listened to the preacher's final blessing. I'm not religious, but if there's a heaven, Geraldine deserves to be there.

When the time for general words had passed, we said our own words to her in single-file fashion. Watching my elderly grandfather lay his head close to her casket and whisper love and goodbyes to his wife, best friend, and mother of his children is something I'll never forget.

When it was my turn. I kissed my fingers and laid them on her coffin and silently told her I loved her. She showed me that blood is not always what makes family.

A receiving line started a few feet away so that people could give condolences to her husband and kids. I walked up to my grandfather and he grabbed me tight and told me that she had loved me so very, very much. I wanted to comfort him, but he wouldn't let me. He just kept telling me over and over how much they loved me. I cried and wrapped my arms around his neck. We simply held each other as the line of people moved around us.

He still totters around in their house by the lake. I imagine nothing has changed in Geraldine's red house since she left it. The little iron horse sitting on the mantle was one I bought at an antique fair and she loved it so much that I gave it to her. She joked that I'd get it back someday. Wink, wink, nudge, nudge. Back then, her passing was nearly two decades away and we could afford to laugh at such silliness. I couldn't bring myself to take it when I left, even though they tried to make me. It belongs on her mantle. Some things just don't need to change.

❤️

I'm not sure what made my sister-in-law want to walk down that street, but a compliment of a woman's home turned into a twenty-minute conversation and history lesson with a stranger. She leaned on her rake as she told us about the old days and how she came to buy a turreted Victorian on a shady street opposite the Minneapolis Institute of Art.

She bought the house in the early '70s when the city offered first dibs to the renters who occupied the old Victorians located across the street from the MIA. Then, like now, there's lot of artist types who live along the row.

She'd moved to Minneapolis from San Francisco with her then-husband, a sculptor of some acclaim. He's now her ex and living back in San Francisco, and when we ask about him, her current husband tells us how to find him on Google. They are all still friends and put one another up when they come into town. No hard feelings, you know?

She tells us that in the early 1970s, the MIA became a non-profit. The rents they were charging the students to live in the houses across the street were considered profits, so they had to get rid of them and ended up selling or donating them to the city. I forget which now. The city, in its infinite wisdom, was going to raze the old homes to put in parking. We gasped at this information and she nodded at our appropriate horror. The residents back then were of the same mind and raised such a fuss that the city decided to offer the houses to the current residents.

For a dollar.

We stood stunned on the sidewalk as our minds tried to wrap around that...and then immediately went to thinking what it's probably worth now.

She told us that the renovations were extensive. And expensive. New copper pipes, new electric, and a host of other cosmetic fixes had to be made. At one time, the house boasted five layers of roof shingles. And when they redid the turret, they found an old newspaper from a previous rehab that was layered in the wall and signed by the construction crew. They framed it and it hangs in the house now.

We chatted for a while about where we were all from. About the skyrocketing San Francisco real estate market and art - of which we knew nothing, but nodded along. About how her ex now owns the home of the first mayor of that city, but he's going to rent it out and move to his studio on the beach. About how San Francisco doesn't feel like home anymore now that the artists are being pushed out by the tech people. About getting older and how she doesn't want to leave her home, but what if she can't deal with the stairs anymore? She's seventy, but doesn't look a day over fifty, so we marvel at that.

As we were winding down, her husband told us we needed to visit the Guthrie (pictured above). We got directions and thanked them both for a lovely visit. She told my sister-in-law to ring the doorbell next time she was visiting the Institute.

Such a fascinating woman. I wish I knew her name.