Ode to Pretty White Boy Who Speaks In Latin Tongues and Sports a Latin Name ( and to all who came before him)

I found you today while not looking.

In my left hip wad of man disappointment.

Great gobs of sad made from the usual things broken.

Trust and intimacy and word and really all the same things once dissected.

Still love lives here I was told once I breathed into tangles and sorted through what is actual and what is worn out story still making like fact.

Safety nets all over body.

Receptacles of ouch too big to eat in one sitting.

Stored you away for some future winter when hungry is what I am.

For real.

For nourishment that makes it all the way to marrow.

Way deeper than that.

The future came today.

I found you wrapped up in not so long ago spring and summer.

I found you hunkered down.

Hiding.

A mess of tight tissue untended.

I thought I was done tending to you.

There is more…

Further I found you with breath born from my yoga and a body that is full of grace.

And pain.

And ecstacy.

And everyfucking thing.

And nothing at all.

A body that knows what to dole out and when.

Today she gave a perfect dose of you, sweet you.

I was reminded by my still mighty thighs of my duty to keep on moving you up and out.

Tears sometimes taste sweet not salty.

All of me knows the way home with out words.

Then come the words.

These are only some of the words.

I found our old dance not fully danced.

Lyrical moving into chaos and then.

Stop.

Frozen fear scaredy cat times two jig.

I wasn’t familiar with your vacant gone south space.

Or was it north?

I didn’t know how to navigate me around your great away.

Your great away colored me dark doubt fleshed out.

Anger is the color of my ancestors.

You seemed father to your father and husband to your mother.

I wasn’t anywhere.

Afterthought.

Forgotten became fire breathing she devil.

While you’re here I want to tell you that the Aloe vera plant you gave me has birthed so many babies.

Oh, and I changed my name.

And my phone number.

And I de-friended you on facefuck.

Only because too much ouch.

And I’m going back to school this week.

And I still have your dad’s Roethke book.

Thank you.

I think I will always keep little purple paperback full of unsung.

(As far as I’m concerned.)

Deathbed poetics and ICU palo santo smudges.

Thanatos came when we weren’t watching.

Took him.

Took us.

I want still to blame it all on you.

I know better.

My body is not big enough to hold all of this.

You and the others.

Angerblameresentment.

I was not built for this not-self-storage.

Space must be made for the rest of me.

The best of me.

I wanted to tell you I saw you.

I’m sorry.

I forgive you.

I forgive me.

I loved you.

I love you.

And…

Thank you.