love

Unexpected

lillian2 Comments

Seven squares sit empty
in front of the number circled in red,
preceded by months of exes. Solid black lines
crossed at the exact middle point.
Belly so big, feet are questionable.
End of season sweet corn devoured,
dripped butter solidified on plate’s edge.
Slab of apple pie about to be devoured.
Fork stops. I stop. Puzzled. Wet.
Not like a dam’s breech,
more like the trickle of a creek.
Not exactly by the book.
Wheels spin, gravel crunches,
rocks spray at mewling farm cats.
Roads rush by.
Do you feel the earth calling you,
my moans stalling you?
Years later, we wait impatiently,
while you adjust lipstick, stalling.
This time, we’re ready.
But you’re not.

 

Crayon World

lillian14 Comments

4494_1099903751119_7111747_n

Color me rainbow happy
your Red Sox cap next to my blue visor.
We sat in bright colored Adirondack chairs
kite string loose, then tight,
as you played with the tension.
Our dreams sailed high into cloudless sky
paled only by your art deco shades
as you stared out, looking for words.
Color me livid when you talked about her,
like lightning flashes in a raging sky.
Anger fueled by heat, dissipated over days of grey.
Rainbow chairs sit empty, lined up, waiting.
Color me invisible, when the door closed.

Photo:
from Provincetown, on Massachusetts’  Cape Cod. Poem and photo in response to the Daily Post Photo Challenge to interpret ROY G. BIV — the memonic to remember colors of the rainbow.

With Apologies to Oscar Wilde

lillian3 Comments

I’d never met a ghost
or a celebrity
so was surprised on the treadmill
when Oscar Wilde whispered
directly in my ear,
the heart was meant to be broken.

Home again,
caretaker roles reversed
your heart beats strong
mine now slow,
blown out from stress
like a Japanese octopus bag.

Takotsubo,
Broken Heart Syndrome.
Not the stuff of playwrights.

I learned again that day
the importance of being earnest.
Talking softly with, not at,
we climbed five stairs
inch by inch,
this time
your steps
matched to mine.

This is NOT Happening

lillian7 Comments

Two hundred fifty square feet of living space.
One glass wall with city views no one sees.
Jagged zig zags roll on monitors
lightning bleeps across the zags.
Your hands still, bloated fingers slightly curved.
My head hears a migraine beat,
while eyeballs stare so long,
they feel outside my face.
This whirring place makes my skin crawl raw.
Your mouth should be pressed on mine.
Like last night. Or speaking simple words
like this, when, or eggs this morning?
Any words from your mouth,
not taped shut
locked inside an intubation tube.

Off-Season Romance

lillian13 Comments

IMG_7248
We waited
consumed with work
climbing the ladder
no time for escapades.

Now, in our winter years
past summer’s torrid heat
we meet on cool chilly nights
sailing into our dreams.

Your gentleness touches me
beneath a black sky lit by stars
until we blossom
in this off-season romance.

Written in response to the DailyPost Photo Challenge to interpret “off season”.
Photo is from Provincetown, Cape Cod. Muse to many a poet and artist.

Low Tide Morning

lillian6 Comments

IMG_0161

So many seaside two-weeks
in this place with you.
This time, different.

crack….crack……crack.
Roused awake, I leave our bed
step outside to the dawn’s cool.

Jetty exposed at low tide
long and hard, a battering table
for the single industrious gull.

It hovers, takes aim, releases
crack……scallop shell hits
unyielding rock. Stays firm.

The gull swoops down,
picks up shell, rises, hovers
and lets go, again and again.

CRACK….success.
Morsel quickly consumed,
wings flare to catch the draft and soar.

I follow its path until chill seeps in
bare feet suddenly cold
high tide’s tangled seaweed nearby.

Back with you, under rumpled sheets
my hand hovers, drops down
rests upon your chest, like yesterday.

And yesterday’s yesterday.
Every day, since that day
I feel your every breath.

Inhale, exhale.
Yes, you are here
with me.

Will He Know?

lillian4 Comments

She wondered
as she tapped the frame slightly askew
replaced the dirty coffee mug on his Chilewich placemat
shuffled the mail so her bill was on top
and turned their bathroom faucet handle just enough
to let the water drip in slow motion,
will he know she’s still with him,
not quite yet a fully embodied angel
in that other world?

Written from a writing prompt in my June Challenge Course: write within a constraint, IE a one sentence poem.

Portrait Etude

lillian9 Comments

She was a collector.

Shelves crowded with knick knacks,
salt and pepper shakers, silver spoons
Avon bottles and beanie bags.

National Geographics on every table,
grampa’s pipe still resting
in the Illinois shaped tin ash tray.

And that was just downstairs.
Climbing up the wooden creaking stairs
revealed a musty attic world.

Windows, long sealed shut
looked down on a weed covered yard,
sidewalks where she drew hop scotches.

Cobwebs bruhsed aside,
we found two trunks, rusty latches
opened decades of memories.

Grampa’s morning coat and grey ascot,
folded atop her yellowed wedding dress,
fragile lace-edged mutton sleeves.

A seed pearl hat pin firmly afixed
to a Juliet cap with fragile tulle veil,
so delicate still.

And there, below the clothes,
the small white leather bible,
wrapped in once white supple leather gloves.

The final layer,
a stack of valentines
tied in faded ribbon.

Their loving epitaph etched
in a tombstone seven miles away,
more alive here
in this trunk of memories.