Way

One way: I watch you ask 

each hunger for a name, 
then stay masked

and shy away
 

One more way to your woe
from the jinx of diaspora
its sudden tomorrows

and kind decay

They say the universe's

reasons are mysterious
but that's not reason--
so... anyway

---------------------

I made myself go outside for half-an-hour this afternoon because it looked so beautiful and temps were all the way up in the 60s. It was lovely. I watched cardinals and robins and finches drinking from the pond... The water looks so dank; I'm a bit worried for them. 

Mothering

Scout finds his water dish 

empty, he reminds me to 

fill it by batting it around.

Like every other toddler 

he eagerly loses himself

in all the glorious noise:

he's cocking his head

and bouncing his dish--

my little drummer pup.

Now I bring him 

a new bowl of water 

and he flings himself

into it, lapping, slurping, 

I'm stroking his head,

and my old body forgets 

it did not birth him--breasts 

spread like wings, tingling

like they did when I fed babies. 

An Equinox

 

I am everything today
I have broken the day
I have baptized plants
I have balanced time
on top of a tiny cloud

I have bled from anger
broken all our sorrows
O child--I have bitten
truth from my tongue
waiting for your love 

[My birthday plants--roses from LB, orchid from EM--are blooming!]

The Incredible Giant Effing Crybaby

I'm starting this post at 2 pm--there's a departmental meeting in < 30 mins, and I wanted to say I've already had two crying jags today + (merely) teared up a couple of times in a drafting meeting. Yay, me. 

I can't even attribute something expansive/altruistic/noble to the last jag. I've had an infected spot that remained even after a two-week course of antibiotics, and I'd made an appointment to see my doctor on April 20th, which seemed far enough in the future that I didn't have to worry about it for a while. Big A thought that was rubbish and said we needed to go to urgent care TODAY. That was terrifying. He promised his hand to squeeze if it hurt and to buy me Taco Bell if I went. So I went. (He wasn't able to be in the room--Covid rules--but I got lidocaine and it didn't hurt as much as I had feared it would.)

I've discovered Taco Bell late in my immigrant life. People were raving about the return of the fiesta potatoes on my social media and earlier this week, I finally understood their adulation. Fiesta (potatoes) forever!

[Pic is some rainbow flashes on the library walls from all the crystals in there.]

Mid-March Madness

One of those days where things seem wonderful one moment: electric class discussions; a chance encounter with a colleague where you both come up with so many new ideas; a guest lecture that is both enlightening and offers students self-care; a lovely thank-you note... And then in the next moment things are so awful and shaky that you can be driving up 127N, see the usual signs on Bigotry Farm, and instead of making you chuckle ruefully, it makes you start crying; or you're discussing Junot Diaz and choke up from thinking about all the 'allies' who are also oppressors.

I know the pandemic still has us in thrall, but having to deal with all the things that were right and wrong in the world on top of it seems a bit much.

Had to block off a two-hour slot tomorrow to draft a statement about the Atlanta shootings with the usual crew since no one else here has said or done anything... thus far.

Evening

I relive volumes about preserving all these hours
as though a summer's worth of sweetness swims

under the surface in the hopeful brine of memory. 

What if there are instructions to make the moment?

What if I practiced each moment before it came--

in the long, lonely present, folding in love, alone...

Open to my destiny as a nomad in this desired body,
understanding? O, I would say in wonder and dismay, 

returning over and over again like a peal of laughter.

Staying alive

At had kind of not been ok, and I thought a green comrade in his dorm space might be nice for him, so I gave him a potted dracena on his 'Boss Day.' At the last moment, I stuck a fake succulent stem in there too. 

Yesterday, he texted to ask about its watering schedule--and while he was watering it...

At: This succulent is fake. lol

Me: I promised you you could keep all this alive. I wanted you to feel good about yourself!

At: Love you lol

Me: Love you <3

At: How often should I water the real plants?

(The picture is a real succulent L gave me last year... I'm bad with succulents, actually--I overwater, and they have no restraint and drink everything and then individual leaves get too heavy and plop off...)