Author: poetryfest

“Are you ok?” my mother texts.

“No, not really” I respond.

I’m anxious. The tears are waiting behind my eyes.

She texts a photo of my grandmother’s body. White. In a casket.

I wasn’t ready for that to appear on the screen.

“Mommy! Outside! Play outside!”
In my most pleading tone I pull my toddler into me and say, “Mommy can’t play right now, sweetie. Mommy needs to do something important. Please watch your show. I’ll play later.”

A voice comes through a scratchy microphone, “Dorothy Quenzer Altmann was a wife, a mother, a sister, a grandmother…”

I reach for a toothpick to test the cinnamon rolls I just pulled from the oven.

“Death reminds us how fragile life is. Time is not measured in years…”

My son barrels into the room, roaring like the dinosaurs on TV.

I force a smile for him.

“What’s that?” He grabs my phone.

“STOP!” I shout and yank it away from him. He’s not used to seeing me like this.

My pelvis aches. Our third baby, still growing inside, kicks me hard. I wonder if this one is another boy, or a girl.

“Johnny do you have to go potty?” I yell from the kitchen.

My mother enters the frame on screen. She’s wearing a black dress and white pearls. She looks almost normal, except for the glaring face mask.

I turn away.

I need a break.

I serve myself a cinnamon bun from the stovetop. A maternal instinct to save this morning with sugar and carbs.
The eulogies are over, but the camera’s still running.

I watch my family say their final goodbyes, kneeling before the body, dressed in their Sunday best. Their faces are covered with masks and their hands are firmly clasped, despite their normal tendencies to reach out for a squeeze.

I’m in my pajamas a hundred miles away, surrounded by flour on the floor, flowers on the table, and sympathy cards on display.

“The service has ended.”

The screen goes blank.

The middle child stirs in his crib.

I have to change his diaper. I have to clean the kitchen.

But instead I stare at the photo my mother sent me.

They buried her in the dress she wore to my wedding.
She doesn’t look like she’s sleeping.
She looks dead.
The baby kicks again.
I close my eyes and sigh.
Time to go on with my day.
Time to go on living

I tell her I want a comrade.
She tells me she wants a girlfriend.
This will be why the relationship ends.
As per usual I am struggling to get her to understand.
As per usual she is as well.
We’ve been bickering just like our parents do.

She asks me about the future.
I tell her I just want a friend.
She cries in the dark these days.
I’ve taught her how to do that.
Much to my regret.

The worst thing about everything isn’t the end.
That will be a clean, cut pain.
An incision to save healthy skin.
It’s the rotting that hurts the most.
The slow decline into death.
We tried to graft healthy skin onto our wounds.
But there’s only so much you can do before you accept the truth.
Sometimes things rot no matter what you do.

into the water i go
to shed my body
and free my soul

taste the grit
and feel the cold
sand slipping under my toes

darkness then fallows
and it is time
one last gulp
all is done

finally,
you are one

I think he’d be surprised to know I grieve him, Jo.

Sometimes I found him pitiful, asking for a hair of the dog, nudging for physical contact, offering oral, with his good hands now touched up with formaldehyde.

First thing I ask is if it was suicide, it wasn’t. I feel relief. His songs have less than a thousand listens on spotify, and they’re in my wrapped. I once asked for the lyrics, so I can upload and follow as he sings. I wasn’t doing a kindness, I have auditory processing issues, and I like his lines.

He pissed me off for his potential. For how frail he looked, how he reminded me of myself, so I needed to get him up, make him well, because if he was well, maybe I could be well, too. Then I estimated he needed something I couldn’t give, and I needed to fuck well off for a while because I know better than to try to be a liferaft with holes in me.

And then he doesn’t slit his wrists, like he tried, he doesn’t take pills, like he also tried. He just has a seizure while out for a cigarette.

I can’t stop thinking of the dumbest shit. His face below me, his smell when he hugged me, when I felt I feared him, when he said he feels safe with me, when I felt him get annoyed, when he told me I’m intimidating, when I was annoyed; the scent dies, that’s weird.

No one’s gonna smell like Jo, it goes with him. It’s this niche stamp of identity, and I don’t know why it hurts so much to think about. That body getting cremated will not smell like Jo like Jo smelled like Jo. And he’s not there inside my Signal app again, to tell him about my new song, him suggest not to master it, me master it anyways, him say it’s good, maybe I can master my own songs.

He’s not there to record me play my silly little song about being obsessed with another man, and he’s not there to climb the staircase while I compose a song about him climbing up the staircase, and record it on my phone with a grin while he holds the space, appearing confused, not necessarily confused, but confused works, I guess. How safe I must’ve felt, I don’t make songs unless I’m alone. I record it while staring at him, turning the page aggressively. I don’t think any version can replace the original, since he will never sit across from me again.

When I hear his songs now, I can’t ask him what he meant. I was just something stuck in your throat, I chose to not tell. When I looked at his arms, I knew he’d done more damage than my attempt casually, without even calling it that. Everyone knew he needed help. He died ingloriously. I don’t know if mine will be as simple as he. He was good, he wasn’t God, he was too pained to be a saint, too bitter for sweetness, but he was good. He stood up for what he
believed in.

I think he’d be surprised I grieve him, Jo. I don’t know what he would say, and whether it’d make a difference if he said it drunk, of well fed and calm. I think he’d like that I’m dissing on him. He swallowed compliments better when they had a touch of spice, and I’m the same. I couldn’t help him. I couldn’t help him. I don’t know what happens with the jacket he wore. His jewellery. His piano. I want that piano.

I have silly things only I know the sentimental value of. Wagamama chopsticks in a book, a rock, butterfly origami. I wonder what happens to those things he owned. I start speaking to him inside my mind, not as a wish, but comfort. I don’t think it could’ve gone another way, but are you surprised I grieve you? Did you find my jokes funny? Isn’t it weird how you’re dead now, Jo? You liked my poetry on instagram. It’s so dumb but it meant so much, I couldn’t…you weren’t good with taking kindness in. Is that why it ends so early for us? How much longer do I get, Jo? How silly will I look wriggling?

I don’t think I could feel it if anyone closer died, Jo. It’d go straight in the box. You ease me into it, Jo – thank you. And I knew. I don’t know how, but I knew. I could smell death on you. I was so afraid for you. Oh, Jo. It’s not fair that I wasn’t wrong. It’s not fair you weren’t loved and loved enough to feel satiated. It’s not fair you didn’t feel peace, just wriggled and wriggled and wriggled and stopped. Where did you go? There was so much of you, where did it go? Is it inside me? How silly is that, Jo, my mind can’t be trusted with the perception of men. Titans, worms, whore Zeuses, Adonises, sad, small, Hades, Soft Boys, Orpheus with his lyre and an empty
stadium

The last interaction we have is when I tag you on an insta story with a Blur boyband photo from the 90s, and the music over it goes “KYLIS – kill your local indie soft-boy.” you say, “I like how of all the bands, you associate me with Blur. I mean, I like Blur sometimes…” with 4 dots on your ellipsis (like a middle aged man, Jo).

I write “Ah, it’s so odd. I feel like we both must feel unseen by each other.

Lay me down and easy
And let me down slowly
Forgive me for being weak
May you help not to hurt too many stead
I beg that you give them my best memories And none
of the bad

Shield them from my transgression Give me solace in
your embrace Leave me not in disgrace
May you not think me stupid

I was very wounded
Let me see you in heaven

I’ll be dead soon I reckon

Your last case of Diet Coke will
never be opened, you lose specifics of who I am.
Your last birthday gift to me, the words
I know you love me.

Gregorian chants in the background
facts fall away, organs
stop working, history between us
ceases to be events, just elongated
moments sitting together in late
summer sun, warming us
to the inevitable transition.

Your mind a patchwork of past memories
working in a newspaper office, childhood Iowa green pastures
I follow the trail as long as possible, but
know I will watch you, my mother, journey
as I stay behind. Until that moment arrives,
I feed you popsicles when you forget how.

There’s always something on the jaded skies
That thumped the wavy spiral of my balloons
And that is death.
When we shut our lenses behind curtains
And our breath stiffened, our patches rigid
Our lips are stiff, and we can’t smell or touch
That which makes us feel like a living flower.
Ah! The dark oceans cleared when my tower kissed the soil.
He was my breath, always spitting white morsels
Into the potholes of my acidic well.
But he had been suffering from the sharp claws of tumours.
His bark has grown lean, crystal balls sunken,
A chubby self grown into a flabby tassel.
I was always at his four feet boxes
Cuddling the hairy strands of his palms.
On August 25th, 1998, however, the blue skies
Turned into a mirage of dark dust
When he muttered and breathe his last air.
A misty sweat drained through my spines
Flashes of thunderbolts ravaged my circles
Is this how bats and spiders lay on their graves
Fed upon by ravaging vultures?
Ikhenoba,
I guess so.
As I stood at the mound of his dune,
My balloons burst into photons of dust
Knowing that the black sickled Hades has poached,
The encrusted diamonds of my soul.

I always referred to Steve as the guy on the couch, but Steve was my mom’s friend, enabler & celestial companion.

After she passed, he claimed the living room as his own

In the center of this cosmic dust covered space station was his rocking chair that when reclined, shot him into a vortex vacuum of Judge Judy & Jerry Springer.

Suspended in an ozone layer of ciggy dust clouds, he snuggled my mom’s blind inbred pug as they both snored into the radiant depths of this astral abyss.

He only left this Star-studded dwelling to stand in front of the fridge, hairy belly out n boxers drinking milk out of the container Ohhh so Good…

Light years ago, he was a Love Canal factory worker & motorcycle drifter that pretended to know how to fix cars

It wasn’t until Steve got brain cancer that I began to understand what his birth in the crab constellation really meant. Like mercury, life is fluid & ever changing & poisonous to the touch

When we signed his DNR all he had was a meteor for a mind & all we had was his ashes

Ethereal waves shoot him into the layered darkness of forgotten Steves

I just came home at 4:47 pm
My head was hurting
The kitchen was a big mess
Food that has been left out
Just for couple hours
Looked like it has been out
for a couple of days
My head was pounding as if I got knocked out in the ring just like a boxer
My eyes were red from all the crying I did
Even though I wanted to cry more
All my tears got wasted
Just like a water fountain that has stopped working
I remember his smile that stretched for miles
That will make a thousand of people smile
Feeling a lingering sense of regret
Still appearing like a shadow
that never fades
That day was different
But all I did was pray
he’s in heaven

You go there each year holding flowers
To clean the gravestone with love,
Caressing his photo with shaky fingers,
And lean to kiss him one more time.

You talk about him every day,
Keep his portraits on your nightstand,
Your eyes watering even after fifty years,
Reviving the story of your fears and love.

You wear your ring on your left hand,
And his one always around your neck,
Like a comforting weight that reminds you
Of the short time you had in the same world.