I am a day late. Well a day for me. For you it’s 11pm but I’m just getting in from a morning run in Stockholm and realized I didn’t set up my blogs for while I was away. I don’t have much, as my trip has a rather demanding schedule and I’m trying to soak in these last few moments with my baby before she flys the nest. So here’s a poem. Next week I will try to do a little better.
Anticipation
Was there ever such sweet anticipation as a cherry in June? Held, eager between teeth where cold water droplets tease the tongue before the crisp breaking of delicate skin the flush of sun-warmed tartness carrying along the sugary bite but tender must teeth sink to gently toy with the unyeilding stone sucking it free of bright red pulp til pristine pebble is all that's left
I’m in a weird mood today. This is the season of transitions, of pressures and demands, and I feel like I’m shutting down in the face of so much of it. Here’s a weird poem to align the inner workings of my mind to the outer life, relentlessly attacking.
Sweater
I put your memory on like an old sweater in all the little winters of my despair
Here the arms pull through to hide the stinging cuts Here, ribbed neck fraying to protect from the noose of loss
Here the cabled warmth falling over my eviscerated belly Here your memory tucks my vital pieces back together, safe and warm
The woolen comfort of words I will never hear again from nights you probably don't remember a softness in the dark, held briefly
I am a lint fuzz on your shoulder but you are my favorite sweater the one I cannot sleep without the only thing that offers relief
Purpose and hope exist in the scratchy bulk of a garment I once borrowed but was never mine to wear
I put your memory on like my favorite sweater in all these winters of self-imposed despair.
To be exact, they were what I would deem a “nightcrawler”. On my rainy walk, with my rescue dog River, and her distaste for the wet (I think it’s the pit bull in her mix) we encountered the large under-dweller, struggling against the asphalt. I watched for a moment. Remembering, that as a child growing up in a dry state (Wyoming), we rarely saw worms that size. If ever you did, was a good omen to gardeners and those were the ones you never took fishing. I bent down lower than my 45 year old knees liked and gently picked up its twisting body, and placed them gently in my palm where it squirmed for freedom, even from a small safety. The rain poured down around us and I let myself feel all of the tickling, wriggling, slightly slimy motion of a life in peril. I took them tenderly towards the grass and out of the space where tomorrow’s sun on the blacktop would bake them, and set them down.
“There you go buddy, good luck.” I said and a woman walking her dog on the sidewalk, moved carefully away from me.
Why don’t we care for things anymore? When did we become so crass? How is it we have become too busy to save even the smallest of consciousnesses? I’ve been thinking a great deal about ‘modern’ life these days, and how less like actual life it feels. “Life” is suddenly something we are fed, by those who control the information. Life is on screens, and filtered to be pretty, it’s reductive, or ridiculous. Competitive and unrealistic. It’s shallow and degrading. When was the last time you held something in your hand that was real? A worm? Your child’s hand? Dirt from your garden? A pen? An apple? Someone you loved (known or in secret) arms wrapped tight and trying to stop time, just for a minute? When did you notice last, a being in struggle? Did you stop? Did you help?
I no longer want to be part of an unreal world. I don’t have years to waste on anything not authentic. What is the point? If I only have so many days, why would I spend them sucked into an algorithm? I want to hear my friend’s voices. I want to read their handwriting. I want to see them across a table or next to me on a walk. I don’t want to be force fed advertising, and told that I need wrinkle cream. As though the natural progression of my body is not something to rejoice in and enjoy. I don’t want to be told in spiraling doom scroll what this world amounts to in the number of likes or angry faces it has. Watch the volley of hatred and hurtful ignorance between neighbors be slung around like poisoned arrows. See artists reduced to fodder for machines, and the brainwashing of it all being NECESSARY, take us over, as though we have no choice in the matter. How can we really justify, as artists, “needing” a platform that abuses and misuses our hard work? I can’t. I never had any big hopes of making it in the industry anyway, so I’m not going to keep buying into a system of false promises, while it robs me of my creativity and passion.
We haven’t always been this way. Don’t you remember?
I know I will miss out. Your faces, your lives, the beauty of your progression in the world. I will not see you. I won’t get to laugh at your memes or comfort you in times of loss. But I will think of you. Just because I’m not there, posting weird writing shit, or poetry, or my bastard of a cat…I am here, thinking about you. Whether we’ve been friends since the fourth grade, or you just joined my writing group, or you read my books, or you gave birth to me…I love you. You don’t need the algorithm to tell you that. You don’t need Facebook as a go-between to keep us connected. I’m here. Loving you. Hoping good things for you. Wishing you a day better than you thought it would be, every day. Each one of you. No likes necessary.
I feel a bit like Neo. Taking the pill. To wake back up to what is real. And it’s scary. And I don’t know if I’ll just be forgotten. Maybe I will. But I suppose the hearts that forget me, I never really had residence in to begin with. Today’s the last day and I’m a little scared. The connection it offered was wonderful, the addiction it’s brought me to and the worry it sustains, is not healthy. For any of us. Here’s where you can find me:
Address (I love letters and will send you one if you provide a return address): NCW, 4128 Main St, #144, Timnath, Colorado 80547
I hope I see you in the real life. I hope you find the balance you need. I hope you don’t give in to the idea that you’re data points and not a living, breathing, squirming, fighting, good-omen of humanity. I won’t be there anymore, but I’ll be around.
Photo by Grafixart_photo Samir BELHAMRA on Pexels.com
I’m going to drive ya’ll nuts, but there’s a link below, if you’re interested in buying my latest book; “No Words After I Love You”.
This stand alone novel is a journey through grief, friendship, creativity and love. It’s about how the heart heals, (or doesn’t) and all the ways humans punish themselves in an effort to be ‘strong’. It’s about deep-seated friends, the kind you’d answer the phone for, even if you don’t answer the phone. It’s about choosing your own family, and learning how to let go the wounds from the real one. Its about trying not to fall in love, even when your heart is already decided. It’s about soup, and rain on dirt roads, its about knowing how they take their coffee and a campaign for bushier, wilder eyebrows. It’s about denouncing god and still finding divinity. Check it out: BUY NO WORDS AFTER I LOVE YOU
And now, a short poem:
Daredevil
My heart does all her own stunts Never one to sit back from the danger or sip Rosé while someone else takes the fall
Oh no, she's always been all in
She sees the perilous ledge the death defying leap the broken bone canyon and nods with bravado flicks her Marlborough into the abyss exhales the clouds of calm and dives in
My heart does all her own stunts but the scars are starting to show and the puckered skin and toughened hide cannot beat as strongly as her younger self once did The bullets she's taken, stab wounds and excisions the irreparable losses that linger in phantom limb syndrome beat ragged and untimed
My heart does all her own stunts but I cannot convince her to stop
She breaks the silence with the crack of a match strike instant whirl of smoke and snap open jumps the flame
She’s Magic on dark nights when I need reprieve from myself when I yearn to slip into someone else’s skin and be the one my parents warned me about
The kind who lives truth through match strikes and bared teeth and hard, dirty alleys rough brick scraping backs of thighs and halting breath that never begs
Unleashed from boredom She carries the burning ember of strife at the end of her cigarette and coaxes the glowing cinder with deep inhalations Blowing out sinuous tails through lips split by love
Back again for more? Quirked eyebrow, pierced and dauntless
yes, again pray unbroken lips with underground currents of tightly wound desire.
I’ve been participating in my own little poetry month challenge in an effort to get back into the swing of the art. For one, it’s a managable way for me to be able to write something every day, even in the chaos of my to do list. For two, I think it’s been very cathartic in helping me work through some of the things landing in my life (and all of our lives right now). The rage inside me finds a place on the page so I can clear a more rational path. The sadness gets to have its moment too, so I can move past the emotion and focus on how best to use my empathy. You don’t have to be good at it to write poetry. You just have to write it.
Poems written by daylight are hopeful, funny creatures not yet domesticated by the world shackled by the weight of unbearable odds
Poems written in the high-sun hours are words through clear eyes not yet burning with the fire of thousands of thoughts, words read, millions of stitches placed across the wound of our burning, tumultuous world
Poems written when I've still got time in the day are different I haven't properly fucked anything up yet there is still hope that I may not I'm a glowing human goddess for whom possibilities still exist
Poems written by daylight seem hopeful and clear unweighted and resilient but they are not me not in total It is the reticent dark, the weary and mistake-riddled soul sitting in the deep weighted night, still choosing to pick up the pen who is truly the poet.
It’s a tumultuous time. An era where its hard to trust information, its hard to have privacy, and its even harder to envision a world where we can be a functioning community again. These are the days that try good hearts. You are not alone. We are all in some phase of struggle. We are all clawing our way up. I love you. I see you. Do what you can, to be kind to yourself and others today. Don’t give up.
Love Me Enough
I've tried to breathe it away this constant ache a hunger, not satiated
I've tried to busy it away with lists and checked boxes
I've tried running it away until my knees were torn and my vertebra grew together
I've tried laughing it away your darkest friend is always the most funny
I've tried writing it away harsh words and compassionate pages like arms to enfold, or choke
I've tried drinking it away, until all I lost were words and years with my children
I've tried cutting it away sharp stings and barely hidden red bracelets
hoping someone would notice but even when they did no one loved me enough to stop me
I'm trying to love me enough to stop me I'm trying, this time to love it away
And I'm learning that means feeding myself on breath sitting through it in stillness running headlong into the fire allowing the storm to laugh through me and writing only the truth watering my brain like a garden holding my body close like a child Soothing the scars and loving the woman who survived long enough to stand in love now
This is my last post of 2024. I’m not sure what this new year will bring, or how much strife and struggle will be faced. I am reminding myself to find hope. In the kindness of my own heart as well as the goodness of other people I know. I hope you are getting some reflective time this week, to think about the year ahead, the things you need to prioritize and the things you are ready to let go of. I hope you are resting up for the fight to come.
Here’s a poem that was inspired by one of my favorite humans. Thank you Mary Oliver, for all the gracious insight into this wild and weird ride of life.
Built to Survive
And oh how it pains me, this disastrous cause so far removed from the fresh, cold fields and the dying gray-pink of November dusk
I am caught in the trappings of an ever-present demand create, create, create sell, and buy, and break the book's spine over the truncated timeline, more concerned for a deadline than the beautiful present view before my own dead line
We do not see the muskrat in this way go He does not build with wet, cold reeds and fallen branches to impress the critic
He builds to survive He creates to have warm shelter from the uncertain storms of life He does what he does, because he knows no other way
How it pains me this rushing through my words and upheaval of capricious page numbers flipping and fighting and settling for the shallow pond, when my heart is an ocean and this art is my shelter its honesty, my survival the only trueness left in the short and tiresome struggle of this one wild life.
Sarah Reichert Author 