Closure: A Poem

You are not mine, anymore.

Your love is not the substratum of my everything,

unconditionally holding me in its embrace.

I'm certain I say this to hurt you, 

to make you feel something for me,

even if it is regret, or sorrow, or pain.

For your silence is cruel

and speaks louder than a thousand voices,

and makes me want to know:

how could you love me

yet so easily toss me aside?

Like a piece of trash.

That is how I feel. Disposed. 

You took what you needed from me,

you called it love,

you called me goddess,

but love does not just take and use and 

then discard. 

That is not love.

That is not devotion.

That is not Goddess/God.

That is unconsciousness moving toward itself.

I'm trying still to see the good, to know that

this is my heart waking up,

and this is the beloved coming to prepare me

for love and more love and ever more love.

For the love that moved through me then moves

through me now and needs no validation, no reassurance,

no illusion of safe harbor, no you. It is not yours,

I am not yours.

And you are not mine, anymore.

Shrine: a poem

It’s cold again, too soon. Finding warm socks

and my favorite flannel makes me think of you,

as does putting water on for tea, and the quiet

gray of the afternoon. I know this won’t always

be so, and even now my brain is charting new

pathways that won’t lead me to thoughts of you,

and you will get lost in the overgrowth of new.

New life. Lived life. I want to build a shrine 

on the forest path we walked together, a place 

for the winter boots you left behind, the brass 

candlesticks, the pages torn out of books you

tucked in pockets, the cleft in your chin, your 

strong body, your tears and your anger. I will 

make an offering: there in the ferns, under the 

aspen and birch, among the pines, I will lay 

them to rest. There they will have a place on 

the earth, resting in the arms of the goddess,

resting in the arms of the woman I was when

I was with you, the woman you imagined into 

being, the woman who loved the man you were 

struggling to become. Right there, in the ferns, 

on the fertile earth of the forest floor, the life we 

never lived will take root, for how could it not 

grow there?

I might just go quiet

I might just go quiet
return to mist in the
treetops
burrow beneath the
blue vervain
sink slowly into
the rivers flow

When the morning light
finally comes like
fire in the pines
I want to burn up
this noise in its flame:

You who came
unannounced,
chanting your mantra
"Love Me Love Me Love Me"
determined to
penetrate my heart

You who sang
to me night after
night and called and 
called until I surrendered 
in response
my  body
my heart
becoming yours.

I want to surrender still
I want to burst open
in this brightness
of remembering

Buried and rising
from the ashes
into the voiceless,
wordless hum and
rustle, belonging to
the forest path
the moss and stone.

You are not here
to hold my hand
you are not here
with your voice and
your rhythm
You are not
here

I am
I am this circling
this silent center
meeting myself
again where
first I met you.

Water

Perhaps you came to me
in error

I don't know, and it
doesn't matter anyway
anymore

here we are
and you have

come
and you have
taken me

with your
lightening

and your
electric
pulse

a divining rod
calling

forth from
under the earth
of my body

the waters of my
everything.