An Open Letter To Spring

An Open Letter to Spring 2012

It was 83 degrees on the 10th day of you

I have to say maybe you’re overcompensating

For the earthworm holocausts

The ankles

That swell around attacks

From tiny vampires

The ruckus

Of liquid tap shoes

On roofs and windows

I don’t mean to offend

But I’ve come to expect a certain appearance

I don’t know that I would recognize you

In a sweater

You don’t need to try so hard

Your tragedies are no hurricanes

Don’t pluck your eyebrows

Into obtuse angles

Your archaic breath

And tender disasters

Are how we teach our new borns

How to be strong


Slowly

You are the first baby step

Half my childhood

Rests in your pages

The world looks newest in your arms

Please don’t be jealous

Don’t look to summer for inspiration

And think you are not the warmth we’ve been looking for

Don’t hold yourself to a winter evening

And deem yourself unclean next to the fallen snow

Death by dehydration or drowning

Is just as permanent

You are the mid point

The exhale

The afterglow

In this world of smaller beings

We teach each other

To manicure our bodies into like shades

To reshape ourselves

Into one another

Like if we couldn’t tell the difference

We couldn’t judge perfection

So I know you might look

Down on us lesser creatures

Perhaps we don’t understand

The pressures that your blue skies

Are always facing

Maybe we are just a little too much like you

To show you how to stand apart

But the perfect day Is 67 and sunny

And if you change

The other moments

Will have nothing to aspire to

So rock us with rain

Create concerts of creatures

Calling out for one another

As the sun breaks

Against the edge of the earth

Reach for the ruckus of chills

On arms that bathe in your dusk

Take us with you

In your moments of self doubt

Lay us down

In what you spill

In sunsets and flower petals

In dewed grass

And butterflied breezes

You are the beautiful mess

We aspire to be your kind

Of disaster.

Dylan

Our first conversation

Was arm in arm about another woman

On our way to friends

With a strange hop-step rhythm

Kicking loose concrete with our heels

And letting a ukulele hang limp

Amongst some of our shoulders

When I met you

You were already dressed as one of my heroes

Sunglasses and curls

Harmonica and melodic drone

My first impression of you

Was an uninvited journey

To the bedside folksongs

My father used to turn into lullabies

I should have known you would soothe me

I should have known you’d be

The kind of man

I’ve always wanted to be proud of

My father used to yell like thunder

So I hid from rain

I’m still afraid of fireworks

My brother

He’s a great guy

But we run like parallel lines

13 years apart

As close as we’re ever going to get

You taught me how to find the sun with angles

You hang tightropes from shadows

And attach them to the moon

You bend my Insight

You see dimensions in atmosphere

Lines

Connections

The primary

How we all come back

To one

Our silence is beautiful

Our music is therapy

Our words are communal

And our worries

Are gently tended

We touch like stitching wounds

I’m healing

My mother

Didn’t let anyone else hold me

For a long time

After I was born

For me

In the ways I am like her

It’s hard to imagine

Another hand that could be a cradle

One day

I want you to hold my son

Carry my daughter

I want them to know the man

I first called a hero

Things That Have Happened Since

Things that have happened since.

I went back to him the week of your funeral

Because I knew I wouldn’t have to explain myself.

I got the tattoo of your mandala on my ribs

Because it’s closest to my heart, without touching the breast you lost.

I almost put it on my hip so you could be the first to see my children

But I got selfish

And didn’t want your memory to get caught up in the stretch marks.

I read your journals, even when you told me not to.

I didn’t realize they’d be filled with all the yelling you never did in front of me.

I didn’t know there was so much to protect me from.

I’m sorry we opened fortune cookies without you the night you were too fragile to get up for your chinese food

Your picture is the background on my computer

I tell everyone about you as a cellist- a professional.

Your days in the Hartford symphony, the trio that accompanied couples down the aisle, and concerts

Why you had so many flowing black dresses

Before you had me.

I started having sex two years after you said I could.

I dreamed of rows of trees the night after

A walk with you

Lilacs like the ones we spent four days planting by the kitchen windows

But full grown this time.

There are days that I close my eyes and pretend the wind is your hand on my cheek

There are days I wear lavender oil like your wedding wreath under my wrists

Waiting to fall in love

Or fall asleep.

I never went on “the pill” because it increases my chances of getting cancer by 63 percent

It’s the only way I’ve ever not wanted to be like you

My friends say I’m going to be a great mom.

Dad fell in love again,

He doesn’t treat her any better.

Kira thinks she’s found the one even though she’s sixteen

I smile when she says it because I think you would believe in her that way

I write poetry now.

I stand in front of hundreds of people

And tell them about you

About me

About things I believe in

Things that I am brave enough to stand up for

It’s the closest I’ve come to being your kind of fighter.

I was hoping you would give me a sign

When I asked for a rainbow.

Instead I slept with a professor.

Partially because you did

and partially because you told me not to.

He wasn’t my professor.

And I’m not so attached.

I cry every time I hear a string section

Or see one of your students with sheet music.

Jesse died

You once said he would

He was twenty one.

I cried for you at his service

Like he cried for me at yours.

I never got to thank him.

Instead he kissed me

On one of those nights that feel like it will last forever

I know you smoked away half your chemo

So please don’t disapprove when I tell you

That night with Jesse the pain and weight

Lifted from my chest in silver strands

We pressed our own clouds against the stars

And we stayed warm and naked and laughing

Until the sun came up.

I haven’t taken a dance class since you drove me.

I fell in love with a frying pan because standing next to the stove

Makes it easier to picture my feet in your footprints.

You used to post quotes about family

In the places you saw the most often

And though the paper is peeling,

I won’t touch the dashboard you marked.

I haven’t used the dry erase boards since you wrote my cell phone number

Tightly looped in aqua green.