It's Always Flowers

[carose59]

Grief was a seed planted in my heart. The flower blooms every year.

I was too numb to feel when it was sown--
My first response to death was dizziness. The earth was spinning, but I was not
Because Patricia was not.

Things were less real, and I tried harder to label them:
'Before Patricia'
'During Patricia'
and, much too quickly,
'After Patricia.'

Getting dressed in the morning I would ask myself, "Did she ever see these panties I'm putting on? This bra? The shirt is hers. The slacks came from K-Mart
one summer
In the void between Then and Now.

(Today I wear her shirt and pedal pushers. Clam diggers? Capri pants? There's a difference, but I've never known it.
Patricia knew it, and would scold me--and the people on TV--when we got it wrong.)

For five years, every spring I locked myself out of things.
Mostly my house, but it started with the car, and on one memorable occasion,
my bicycle.
It would last a couple of months, then stop.

That was my flower, the flower of forgetting that there was no one inside to let come back in.


This year I'm losing credit cards.
Chase probably has me on a list, since in three weeks I've lost a credit card and three bank cards.
What can I tell them?
"Five years ago my girlfriend, the keeper of my heart, died, and I'm not over it. I used to lock myself out of things, but now my grief has found a new way to express itself."

The flower mutated; now I can't seem to find my pocket to put my card back into.

I don't know what kind of flower that is. A thistle, perhaps?
I read back over what I've written on this day before, but there hasn't been much.
This year's pain seems like a reversion to the first pain: incomprehension. "She's dead?
I can't. She's dead."
The world spins, but she doesn't, and I don't. It makes me dizzy.

Things I want to share with her stab at me, thorns on the flower, it must be a thistle.
But then I forget them.

My mind can no longer be counted on to make a tight fist.
It refuses to hold onto things the way it used to.
It's covered in the pollen of nihilism: why bother to remember?
Who can I tell?
I write here.
I tell my mother.
But some things are too ours to be shared,
and how many people want a twenty minute back-story for a ten second joke?
That's not a shaggy dog story, it's more a nouvelle cuisine story, all presentation followed by a garnish meant to be a meal.

I'm wandering a bit here,
and carrying a small stuffed lamb in my purse. (And a flower in my heart.)
Was it my lamb, a present from Patricia,
Or her lamb, a present from me?
I don't remember, and there's no one to ask. (Well, I asked the lamb, but she has no mouth, so perhaps that was unkind.)

Today, the eighth, will be over soon enough, but tomorrow is Tuesday.
And I feel more of an emotional attachment to the day's name than its number. (For my mother, my grandfather's death is always Band Day at the state fair, and a Monday.)
Today there are tremors, the petals of the flower straining to open. Tomorrow there will be something stronger, a fully bloomed grief-flower open in my heart.

I hope it rains.

Comments

[melodyclark.livejournal.com]

Absolutely, unequivocally beautiful. You are such a fine poet/prose poet/writer. And the icon is especially telling and meaningful and, yes, iconic for those who know.

(hugs) I know Pat is reveling in the beauty of your words as much as the rest of us are.

[carose59.livejournal.com]

That's very true, about the icon. It's my poetry icon, but it has a deeper meaning for this poem.

And thank you. Your opinion of my words means a great deal.

I've finally gotten to where I can accept that she knows I didn't write her poetry when she was alive because I didn't hurt for her when she was alive. I don't feel neglectful of her.

And {hugs} right back! I love the heart balloons!

[gweneiriol.livejournal.com]

*HUGS*