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I’m trying,
I’m tired,
Heavy eyes,
Dragging limbs,
Bubbling resentment,
Burning anger,
I do not remember
Joy.

I’m trying,
I’m tired,
Pretend positivity,
Longing laughs,
Suffocating panic,
Helpless,
I perform
An award-winning act,
I shall continue
Till the mask
Breaks.

I’m trying,
I’m tired
Of chasing perfection,
Excellence escapes my grip,
Perfect performer,
Deceiving illusion,
Praying for someone
To see right through it.

I’m tired
Of trying
To keep fixing
My mask,
Tired
Of praying for help,
Pleas
Falling on deaf ears,
Perfection achieved
Through deception.

I do not remember,
I cannot remember,
Why can’t I remember?
Joy.

Escaping hope,
Consuming fears,
Tired……

I cannot
Anymore.

This is not morning, evening or any time at all.
The dial on the clock never changes,
watches stopped the second
I didn’t live here anymore.
A nine-year-old friend who died at twenty
plays wiffle ball in the yard with me
near the tree brought down years ago by lightning
as an owl calls from the corner.
Only I hear it and feel what is lost.

The path is roughed rocks
pushed from the earth each spring
and ready to keep me upright
with their tenuous traction. But find one
too smooth, I slide between, my breath
catches on memory’s point
and leaves an ache too far
to be only another hunger.

Some things aren’t meant to heal.
I cross oceans as leaves on sidewalks swirl
and stones turn in the earth with my passage —
I dream of a home I know isn’t mine
but am too old to go back,
too young to do anything else.

Our worlds collided over a decade ago, you were three and our time together lasted minutes.
You were such a beautiful child, dark brown eyes against olive skin.
I wonder who you are today, what kind of adolescent you became.

I wonder if you are still alive.

I can still feel you stare, begging me to make the pain go away.
I can still see your skin coming off in clumps from the burns covering your tiny body.
I can still hear your screams, echoing in my ears for eternity.
And there is nothing I can do but hold your gaze.

I am so sorry.

Author bio

SGT Nate Didier was an Infantryman with C. Co. 1-133rd INF, 2/34th BCT deployed to Kosovo from 2007-2008 and Nuristan Province, Afghanistan from 2010-2011. He resides in Cedar Falls, Iowa and enjoys the outdoors, reading, and spending time with his children. He has previously been published in Culture Cult Press’ Spring Offensive: Poetry of Strife and Spring (2023) and the Right Hand Pointing’s The Law of Forgetting: Poems on Moral Injury (2023).

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My heart fell out of my chest and into the void
As you fell out of my womb and into the toilet.
A feeling I’m afraid I will never forget
Every time I sit down.

How can blood be so painful yet so comforting?
Because it reminds me of you.
And when it’s gone, it feels like you will be too.
And I will be empty again.

Would it be disrespectful to women who birthed live babies
If I said I still feel like a mother?
Honestly, I don’t give a damn how they feel.
I don’t give a damn about anything that doesn’t propel me closer to you.
Thank you for showing me that their opinions don’t matter.

You were so innocent and pure, you knew nothing of the evils of man.
You never felt a broken heart, a moment of dissatisfaction.
You felt nothing but love and nourishment from my body.
So I know that you somehow understand
That I had to break myself into a million pieces so that you would never have to suffer.
So that you would never know what it’s like
To have two parents that just weren’t ready.

Kintsugi is the art of repairing broken pieces of pottery,
Fusing them back together with gold dusted glue.
Showcasing the cracks instead of hiding them with translucent paste.
When a bowl breaks, does it know it will never be the same again?
Does it question its purpose
Now that it’s in pieces on the floor?
Does it know that its keeper still sees its worth and beauty?
“Please, don’t discard me!” It cries.
“I can still be of use in this world.”

Rio, my gold-dusted glue.
Lover, the hands that put me back together.
How can I ever thank you enough?
You knew I would break,
But I was none the wiser.

I want to live in this pain,
So I’ll never forget her.
I want to bleed forever,
So I’ll always remember.
Afraid of nothing except moving on,
Still I grit my teeth and push through.

I feel your wisdom all around me.
I feel you holding us in your hands,
Connecting us, bonding us.
The gold-dusted glue mending parts of us back together
That we didn’t even know could break.

“Her time has passed”, Doctor Heim said
“She’s still lovely.
My wife of 51 years.”
“Yes Ralph, Vickie was quite a stunner.”
Then a brief pause
“Well, I’ll be getting back to the hospital.
The coroner will be here soon.”
Then a brief pause
Ralph put on a record
The Begin the Beguine*
He lifted her lifeless body out of the bed
“Come dearest
Let me hold you in my arms again,”
He began dancing with her lifeless body
“Do you remember that night on the beach?
We walked naked
Suddenly you faced me
and said, “Now.”
Sex in the moonlight
Sex in the sand.”
Then a brief pause
Ralph resumed dancing with her lifeless body
“Yes dearest, good times.”
He danced and remembered
and whispered in her ear
Then gently lay her on the bed
The Begin the Beguine still played
He kissed her lips
“Goodnight dearest
I saved the last dance for you.”
Then a brief pause

—
* “Begin the Beguine” is a song written by Cole Porter (1891-1964) at the piano in the bar of the Ritz in Paris,
October 1935.

sometimes i think my sister and i have the same blood and i wish to cut myself until i am pure, i am cleansed.

sometimes i think she is kind, and she is sweet and a mother to me when the real one wasn’t.

sometimes i wonder if it was better to never have been born, to never have the same glass- rimmed face as her.

sometimes I hate myself because i am like her, and i pray to my creator that do whatever you want, but don’t you dare make me from the same potion you did her

sometimes she spoils me like a child with sour candy and i am grateful that at least i have her.

but ultimately, I grieve her, mourn her for all that she is and for all that she was.

i am hateful and i am demonic in her eyes, and she is the life that i never wish to live in mine.

on the face of the earth, i love her.

but I’ve never liked her.

In Memory of my Sister Rima (1963-2020)

Confined, refined, undefined, resigned to
house arrest, without guests,
pressed for eternal time,
dispossessed – where did you hide your despair
during those dark days?
In the haze of rushing ambulances,
when people cheered the nurses, then cursed them?
On what piece of dirt can we meet if we are not dead yet?
can we watch the sunrise with all those who gave up
their lives so we may continue to live,
eat in restaurants, and gather at Thanksgiving?

We buried you, eleven of us at your funeral,
one under the maximum allowed,
everyone all alone, grieving six feet apart,
after long nights of separation,
we pitched a tent next to your grave,
on the dried earth of our disappearance.
Are all those we lost, who coughed their lungs out
so we may drink at the bar without masks,
huddled together on the high seas of our selfishness?

Would you trade your hockey tickets for a respirator?
for a telescope, to look for them,
gathering nectar from celestial stars
to spike our drinks with compassion?

The first stage of Grief is Denial,
In which the subject cannot come to terms with the reality of their loss,
Though many chalk it up simply to a sense of shock or disbelief it is far deeper than that.

Consider Schrodinger’s Cat,
The now famous thought experiment that explores the theory that unless an object is observed it
can be in two state of being at the same time,

So if a cat were placed in a box with something that could potentially kill it,
It would be both alive and dead at the same time until the box was opened and the cat could be
observed.

Now,
Consider the aftermath.

How long will he wait to open the box?

Does he open it immediately?
Does he rip off the band-aid and move on?
Or does he let it sit on the kitchen table,
Staring at it,
Filled with dread but too afraid of what he might find when he opens it.

Does he wait until the middle of the night?
When he already feels so wretched and rotten so he might as well open it?

Does he wait until a guest brings it up,
Asking about the strange box behind his sofa?

Does he shove food into the crack ,
Hoping on some off chance it would keep it alive?

Or does he never open it?

Maybe he leaves it shut long after it would have died anyway.

How long does Orpheus wait until he looks back at Eurydice?
Until he opens that box and knows for sure the death doesn’t become real for him.

Until that box is opened there is some state in which his cat is alive,
even if only in his own mind.

It is the beginning of the end,
It is denial,
It is grief.

I don’t remember the sound of your voice anymore,
but I think it was a little raspy.
I have memories of you,
but often wonder if they’re real
or just images stitched together from old photos.

Many of those images stand in stark contrast:
fiery, red lipstick
sterile, white hospital bed.
warm, blue swimming pool
cold, green oxygen tank
long, tan, wool coat
clear tubes overflowing
curly, auburn hair
wrinkled eyelids, twitching.

You deserve so much more than
a patchwork quilt of random memories,
but after all these years,
this quilt is all I have left of you.

And the saddest part of it all is
most often when I think of you,
I remember watching you die
rather than watching you live.