happy birthday anneisrestless!

rockabye baby

I don’t know if anyone ever told you, so I’m telling you now. this is the way the cradle rocked: you had blood in your mouth before you ever had teeth, baby, and no one ever taught you how to eat without biting your tender tongue. it still hurts all the time, doesn’t it? still stings when you talk?

(I’m sorry)

instead of primary paint under your five small fingernails, you stored two layers of your own scratched skin and a gallon of saliva from trying to suck off the fingerprints because you didn’t want a tie that binds you quite so close to the people who know how to hurt you best, because when you hear “rockabye baby” all you can think of is how your childhood was a mess and no one was ever there to catch you.

(I’m sorry)

you are not the story of how he broke you or the tree top she left you in. you are the sonnet of the way the wind doesn’t scare you anymore when it’s blowing down your straw house, your wood or your brick, but that doesn’t mean you don’t deserve an apology for how loud the boughs broke and how hard your heart beat when you fell and didn’t land on your feet.

(and I’m sorry)

I’m sorry that it hurts but you’ve got to keep talking even when the blood stains your twenty-something teeth. I hope your ears stop ringing; I hope your heart stops needing its own padded room to beat itself relentlessly against in your chest. I hope you get some rest, baby, because when the nursery rhymes sound more like a tornado than a gentle breeze, I know it’s not easy to sleep, but eventually you’ll remember how to dream.

you’ve just got to keep talking about it… even when it hurts to speak.

— liz (4.11.2014)

rockabye baby (spoken word 4.11.2014)

promises and pleas from the weary heart you won

I want lazy mornings and hot showers and my fingers combing through your wet hair and my thumbs stroking your face. I want to wake with your eyes on me, your hands on me, your lips on me. I want to ignore all of the clocks and clicking keys and current events for a week, a month, a year straight. I want our feet on the wood and the linoleum, the cotton and the porcelain, the tile and grass.

I want to lay in the backyard with you and count the stars you can only see well from this hemisphere; until we can’t keep our eyes open anymore; until we reopen them to bodies covered in dew. I want to watch the morning light change as it falls across your skin; until it turns into evening shadow; until it becomes golden again.
I am not the kind of person to promise forever because forever is too big and abstract and unfathomable, but every morning I can muster I will wake you with a promise: today. today, passing fast or slow. today, you and I. today, us. today, your hand in mine. today, I choose this.

and every night, before we sleep, I will whisper a plea: tomorrow. tomorrow, whether loud or low. tomorrow, you and I. tomorrow, us. tomorrow, your hand in mine. tomorrow, choose this with me.

come stay here, with me, love. I want you by my side and in my bed. cross the world to come to my front door, so that when I choose today, you can choose tomorrow in return.

-- liz (5.6.2014)

promises and pleas from the weary heart you won (spoken word 5.6.2014)

I wonder what I called you, as a baby,
if the tongue that now tames words
was deft enough to form mom or mommy,
or if you were just a simple stumbling set
of the same sweet syllable: mama.

to the one I can't remember, and can't forget:

I grew with your sacred perfumes
dabbed upon my wrists, and my fingers
wrapped tight around your gold hand-mirror.
I thought I could see you, in me,
if I looked closely enough,
but my pin-straight red hair wouldn't curl
like your delicate black-brown locks
and your jewelry never quite fit me right, either.
I was not a golden little girl. give me silver,
and dirt, and dingy-kneed pants.

mama: a black off-shoulder dress
hanging in a closet.

mama: picking blue for the nursery
of a brought-home baby girl.

mama: two years was not enough
to lock your memory into mine,

but they tell me stories, always
the same repeated slices of your life,
and I think you probably know:
I'm kind and gentle (when I am)
because you taught me.
you might not have grown this heart,
but you taught it to beat sweetly
in your absent legacy;
in my grandmother's weathered hands,
in your sister's welcoming home,
in the tilt of my handwriting,
which so closely mirrors your own.
you didn't teach me how to write,
before you were gone,
but I can hear some semblance
of your voice in every song I sing now

mama: I wear those black dresses
but they still get dirt on the edge.

mama: some shade of blue will always
be my favorite color.

mama: twenty seven years here without you,
but I carry you in my pockets.

-- liz (5.11.2014)

mama (spoken word 5.11.2014)

ten things to tell the world about you

one. fate. providence. kismet. serendipity. fortune. karma. luck. destiny. favor. wishes come true.

two. you are not a tap water reflection, no distortion in the clear, but you ring like the sound of spoon strikes on glass, resounding against the walls of the home we are building. the sound echoes into eternity.

three. there is music in the prints of your fingers. you teach me new melodies every time we touch, and I will always sing your tune in higher octaves, always hum your measures in lower tones.

four. your voice unblocks the landslides of gravel in my bones, clears all of the paths to make growing easy. you carve out canyons and fill them with crystalline water. I am now grasslands and flowers, on the inside, a perfect habitat for permanence no matter the seasonal shifts.

five. holy is the heart that keeps your blood running hot, in passion and endurance. holy are the lips that bless me gently, and the teeth that take me tenderly but tough. holy are the paths of your hands. you make sacred their destination.

six. you are beautiful in the way the sky opens when it storms; crashes and cracks and the deluge unrelenting. I am outside with no umbrella, arms flung wide, eyes closed, waiting. I never have to wait for long.

seven. when my eyes carry currents, you come ready with sandbag hands to build my banks. you would drown to keep me steady. you would sink to keep me rising. I would drain to dirt and dry forever if I lost you. please, never let me lose you.

eight. you carry your names like a family crest, tattooed black across your collar: helper, healer, lion-heart and lover. there is a secret one, written in your palms, and I can hear it whisper when your eyes crease in easy smiles. I cannot wait to call it out.

nine. numbers mean nothing; letters, little more; only the sound of you, breathing gently beside me. only the kiss of your eyelashes to cheekbones. only the sun, rising daily in your morning smile. only the sky, showing stars when you whisper goodnight. only this, only us.

ten. fate. providence. kismet. serendipity. fortune. karma. luck. destiny. favor. wishes come true. none of these can match what the universe gave me when it introduced me to you.

— liz (6.20.2014) / lizletsgo.tumblr.com

ten things to tell the world about you (poetry 6.20.2014)

On the threshold of the evening I stand, fireflies dancing up and around my eyes, blue skies slowly fading into saccharine pink, burnt umber and heather grey. I stay still in the faint light, precursor to the encroaching night. I wonder what sights your eyes can see in this moment we share almost completely unaware of each other except I know you’re out there, somewhere.

The sea falls quiet, waves hushing the dark like children’s games of Chinese whispers. Crickets sing in the hedgerows and birds play flutes and piccolos in the trees. I wonder whether you can hear me speaking over the sound of your creaking bones, crumbling like the house we once called home, prelude to an end, overture of a chapter in our lives we’ll never get to live again.

I smell clean wind blowing from the South West, prevailing like my love for you. My sailing ship was sunk by your raging sea; you sunk me and I never quite learned how to swim. I can smell the torrent of the oceans in my nose, I can feel the salt at the corners of my eyes, taste the flesh of the world on my tongue and feel crystallised brine on my hands.

On the threshold of the evening I stand, waiting… waiting… waiting. I know you’re out there, somewhere.

-- written by georgia/read by liz (7.8.2014)

liz lets go

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