Autumn 2024 Poems

(As I was teaching, I felt myself slipping away again. I did not want that to happen again, so I opened a blank journal, and decided I would write one poem a day for the rest of the year, to stay connected to my heart. I didn’t get that far, but it was a good practice I know I can pick up again any time, and it helped me continue to process some grief.)

9-18-24

Sunday

is the first day of Autumn

and I hope I find myself

by then.

Today

I taught children:

line, ray, segment – success.

Yesterday

someone told me

I was pretty.

A year ago

I thought I would never

fall in love again

but now

I am only certain that

no one will ever feel as natural

as you.

Today

it is raining again

and I hope I find myself

again

one day.

Maybe I will

in the pages of this book.

9-19-24

Drops of mist

covered me

like that many thousands of questions –

clouding my vision so I squint.

What if I could practice being brave

not just when it’s obvious I should

but when I’m wondering whether

to allow myself to call it that and

not just An Adult Who Can Adult

(what a cringey verb)

I carried the grief for so long

I feel ungrounded without it,

like sleeping without covers,

driving without a seatbelt,

driving without a GPS.

It made me stronger, but somehow

in the struggle to stay afloat

I lost myself

and I’m hoping

(if she doesn’t rise from the ashes)

she’ll sprout from warm ground

in a year or so.

But how can I truly keep on living

without you?

9-20-24

Today I woke up sad.

Some days, the fog lifts,

and I feel. Everything.

Mostly love.

Which feels like sorrow.

But this life doesn’t let me linger,

tend to the grief, so it becomes anger.

I was angry

until I could come home and cry

and then I remembered

it was all just sorrow.

Just tears

at the end of the day.

Just longing.

Just the same old loneliness

as always.

9-21-24

Today I went scuba diving

in my heart.

All was dark and quiet,

though storms passed through

and the scent of rain made me long

for forests and waterfalls.

I wish the press of the water,

the stillness and isolation

might be broken as easily as

waking from a bad dream, or maybe

I could at least find a friend down here,

in the eerie stillness, the silence

of the dark.

The iris of my heart is open wide:

hoping to capture any bit of light

it can detect.

9-22-24

Today I walked down the aisle

looking at all the hair products

at the store.

I do this every time I go:

search for that jar of curl balm

you used.

Most of the containers are sealed

closed,

but I keep thinking I could

find the one you used by scent.

Would I remember

the smell of your hair?

How it lingered on my pillow.

If I could find that jar of

balm, I’d buy it and

maybe it wouldn’t bring you

closer,

but at least in one tiny way

it would.

9-23-24

Today

I am a blank slate.

Today

I am just me. Me without the weight

of all that it is to be lost.

Today I woke

and had found myself, whole and sacred,

me without anyone,

making nourishment and meaning

out of loneliness and longing.

What magic can I conjure

to turn grief into peace? And yet

how could this long, lonely road

of tears, silence, desperation,

vast, echoing nothingness –

(I mean the work of my

rebirth)

be called anything other than

the product of

pure courage?

9-24-24

Today

I am proud of my strength

for it has taken years of practice,

struggle, tears, unrelenting struggle

but at last I see the muscle

of my strength and grit.

It shows in my self-advocacy.

It was hard-won.

I don’t have poetry tonight

so much as I have

the declaration of my strength –

I am my own fiercest protector –

and this clear message

for a world that tried to

break my spirit:

Don’t fuck with me.

9-25-24

Today

I am longing for comfort, for a

soft place to land.

Arms to hold me, to keep me secure

when I feel the tilt of the Earth

and all looks bleak.

I call on my demon dragon, on my

inner fortitude, on my

ferocity.

I look her in the eye and know

we are each other’s protectors.

She looks me in the eye and

shelters me with her wings,

knowing as I do,

there is a part of me that has

broken beyond repair, into

beautiful.

9-26-24

Today

I articulated many things well

including

the memory of your embrace,

the intensity of what I need,

how I didn’t like children

when I was a child,

and how to apply a band-aid

to a six-year-old’s bloody knee

when you are too tired to even think.

It was

a successful day.

Succulent overalls,

confidence,

rush-hour traffic

and an unexpected hug.

Poetry

in my heart, even when the heart

is quiet.

Poetry on my fridge

that is only a memory, but

as real as my preposition lesson.

9-27-24

They tell me I am a

force of nature; they tell me

I am doing amazing things

but no one knows

the true work is in the day to day

surviving

and continuing without a light

to guide me through.

The walls are cold and smooth

as I run my hands along, squinting

towards an end to the

tunnel, but I’ve been in the dark

so long I can see

with my heart.

I can close my eyes and pretend

I’m mere steps away from the end.

End of sorrow,

end of empty,

end of hollow.

9-28-24

Today

I thought of the garden

where we once planned to stroll

under a parasol, and where

you held me like home

because ever since losing my anchor

I have searched for comfort

and a place to land

and I found it in your arms.

You were a miracle

warming those grey spring days

with forsythia sunshine

and eyelashes against my cheek.

You were a dream I feared

was too good to be true.

I woke up one day

to find that it was.  

9-30-24

You

are the realest thing in my life

your

sunshine smile

your smile I feel against my lips –

a memory from another life –

the dream I feared was too good

to be real

but still you are the realest thing I know.

You

are the place I go to remember myself

to remember my worth

to think

once, you pulled me close

held my hand

to your beating heart.

(Later)

10-12-24

Sometimes

when you tell things as they are

you lighten the burden

of how they feel

to be carried.

11-5-24

I long to be loved

the way I love.

With the same disregard for moderation

and the same amount of courage.

I want to be loved

with the same caliber of strength

that is within my marrow:

the tenacious, graceful devotion

that suspends stars against the endlessness of space.