Our Second Date Was At a Hardware Store

On our second date of sorts, we wandered the hardware store and talked about countertops. We agreed that we liked the black granite. At the sight of the price tag, of course, he said, "So we probably won't be getting this for our FIRST home, but you know...someday."

And he meant it.

What affect could I possibly have, what spell did I unknowingly cast, that he would be possessed to say these things so soon? He kissed me in the lumber aisle and bounced my daughter on his hip through power tools, with every movement rearranging my thoughts, with every word renovating the interior of my mind. What did I do to deserve this remodeling? It came at a high price, but his words sanded away my anxiety, and built my trust in humanity from the ground up. An expensive feng shui of the head was occurring as we wandered up and down, and I listened.

"We're GOING to have a bath tub like this," he said.

"How do you feel about crown molding?" he asked.

Our second date. He was completely serious.

And in the middle of this imaginary home he was building with his lips, in the center of our total insanity, I finally, FINALLY felt safe.

Buried

I can't do this anymore, this feeling of the wrong place, fitting myself into a coffin and crawling underground. I'm tapping at the lid, frantically ringing the bell, but no one in this whole damn town has a shovel. My home is in the blue sky, underneath the fishbowl, feeling like a speck of dust so far away from anything, but so close to the infinite, wrapped around providence, staking everything I have on getting out from underneath the earth where they put my bones. Crushed by confusion and the madness that ensues when you lose love and find it again within a two week period, rattling my cage bars and wishing I could see stars, nobody can hear my voice, it just won't carry far enough.

Always Turning to Salt

I use the word nostalgia as though it were a conjunction, threaded throughout every poem, every line dripping in it, if not subtly, repeated like it's cheap to say it, the word itself and the idea too, completely overtaking everything I write or do. And I live in a room with it, imaginary, sitting in the cheap Motel 8 of my mind, the boarding-house of memories, the birthplace of many and all regrets, and I lay in my bed and smoke despair, wondering how I got from here to there. I watch the telly, the history channel, it speaks to me soothingly and reminds me how I got here. The year is 2010 and I'm wandering the halls of a psychiatric ward that came highly recommended. It's 2006 and the summer is so warm, the streets of Paris are so dirty, my best friend just moved to Tennessee. It's 2013 and I'm holding my newborn daughter in my arms as she needs and needs and I give and give, wanting nothing more than for her to stay needy and small. The scenes blur through on the television, hazy through the static of forgetfulness and lost detail, and there is an earthquake in Nostalgia every day. This living in the past, Lord it's just not sustainable, my walls are crumbling and the TV reception keeps getting fuzzier. I'm lost as to how to stop using that N word, lost as to how to stop missing those miseries, embellishing and sugar coating a past in which I never really lived, always looking backwards, turning to salt over and over, always living in this room. The door locks from the outside, and I never thought to ask who had the key.

Her

A slice of soul is missing here, a piece of darkness, like black glass against the sand, like night-times unshakeable but lost, like a past left behind but remembered. A thing that I love is separate from me, a spirit-child, a drunk friend, left to gasp for air at the New Mexico border, struggling to breathe on the SoCal shores, and I can't bring her back without going to get her.

I have been missing her, her of the smoke clouds, she of the random road trips, lady of the backpack, belonging everywhere and grabbing at everything, the pen in her hand a torch to light the way. She lies dying in a garage in Durango, in a shady hotel in the Gas Lamp District, those places where I felt so close to her, dying to do it all over again, but I don't know how to pick up the pen, and I don't know how to let her in.

I've been writing about not writing for a year. I am withering now, and I need her.

Random Car Ride Poem

What is life? This existentialist null-shit, I can't handle the voices all getting quiet in my head. You're sharing your soul with me, daily exposing, ripping tissue paper open like a Christmas morning monster, and I am rubbed raw by the newness in texture, the fabric of something I asked for in sincerity but didn't understand. These jeans are too tight. 60 degrees in February. My thoughts ramble on like a flow I can't control, nothing is everything and the mundane becomes my light, and there lies my fear, when the chaos subsides, I want the storm to come back and swallow me again, so that I don't have to look in the mirror.

13 Words That Say It All

I fell out of the whirlwind and into faithfulness.

And I'm not sorry. 

For The Next Time You Talk About Food Stamps

Next time you think about a food stamp recipient, think of me.

The next time that you complain about all these lazy people on welfare, checking out with their SNAP card that your taxes pay for while they're on their iPhone and wearing their nice jeans, think of me and my beautiful daughter. No one from the outside would know our struggle. No one can see just by looking at me that I am a single mom that was just laid off, who has known better days financially. I'm texting on a hand-me-down iPhone that was a gift from my dad. Neither my daughter or myself look or smell like we're living below the poverty line, but we are. Everything we're wearing or holding was a gift from a birthday or Christmas, or a hand-me-down from a generous family. We both smile and laugh, neither of us looking dejected or homeless. But I'm paying for the cart of groceries that will feed us for the next week with government aid. Am I abusing the system? It doesn't feel like it to me.

How would I feed Paige if I didn't have food stamps? Her formula is expensive and I was unable to breast feed because of a medical condition. She needs fruits and vegetables and bread and meat to grow, and I need all of those things to have the energy to be a good mother to her. The charity of family and friends is wonderful and clearly comes from Holy Providence, but I still don't know anyone personally who is in the position to foot my monthly grocery bill or my rent. I was laid off the week before Christmas. I am the only income for my household and it's my job to do everything in my power to provide for my daughter. What would you do in my situation? Applying for food stamps definitely does a number on a person's pride - there's no need to perpetuate the stigma by publicly complaining about your tax dollars going to lazy welfare recipients who should just get a job.

I have applied for twenty plus jobs since the day I found out the hospital was shutting down. I have sold too-small baby clothes and other things that we didn't really need in order to have a little money to buy presents for Paige. Could I sell my slightly-broken iPhone and all the cute clothes I have before relying on government programs? Sure! But I'm sure I would get less than enough to buy a week's worth of groceries for all of it, and then I'd be stuck without a phone for potential employers to call me on, or clothes to wear to my interviews, or my sense of self-worth and pride in the way my daughter and I present ourselves to the world. 

When I walked into the Jefferson County office to apply for more benefits than I was already receiving, I noticed that very few people in the room with me looked "poor." Many of them were wearing clothes that looked nice, had a smart phone, had kids next to them who were playing with fun, bright plastic toys that had seen very little wear. Would you judge everyone in that room? How do you know their story? Is there abuse in the system? Sure. Of course. Any system, no matter what it is or who is running it, even a church, will have a few people who want to take advantage of its generosity. But I am not one of those people. I am doing everything in my power to provide for Paige and I in this scary time of unemployment. And I'm sure everyone in that room had a story not too different from mine.

So next time you think of a food stamp recipient, think of me. Think of the judgements you may be passing on someone whose story you know nothing about. And remember that things are almost never what they seem. "Below the poverty line" may not look like the rambling homeless guy with no teeth. It may look like a nice girl with a beautiful daughter, lost in a world that dealt her a bad hand this time, doing everything she can to make her life better. "Below the poverty line" may look just like me. 

He's An Old Friend

Worry comes to me in the night time, to talk and to speak and to explain the difference betwen the two. He pours himself a water from the sink and watches me closely. He can be as large as the sky and as small as the dirt on the kitchen floor. My mouth opens but words don't come out; Worry makes its way in and nestles, couch surfing in the sanctuary of my innards, making his sorry self at home, leaving signs of lifelessness everywhere. I pick up after him, caps from beer bottles and relics of the past, ticket stubs from places he went without me. How does Worry travel so far and still manage to come home? He leaves the bed cold and my fridge empty, my stomach full but my appetite dissatisfied. He makes me meals that I never taste and leaves his stench in dirty laundry all over my frontal lobe. We have breakthroughs together over wine in dirty glasses, but he points out the mess and we start all over again. You can medicate anxiety but you can't erase the patterns that have followed you for a decade; there is no such eraser. Goo-Be-Gone doesn't hold a candle to this melted wax all over the carpet. I can't eradicate the scent of Worry from this place. He is everywhere and in everything, invading me with impregnated thoughts of weight loss and hair color, appearances and motherhood, responsibility and joy, tipping scales with sugar and yeast, fermenting the age-old voices into whiskey that goes down like nail polish remover. I would stop inviting him over, but he's an old friend. He fills me up and keeps me company, even if it's the miserable kind, and Lord knows I spend more time with him than I do with my own self, but I lost my own self in the dishwasher and the dryer, and she won't come out unless I put these fingers to the typewriter, and even then only in trickles. Worry bleeds on the paper and we start all over. I bandage his hands and we start all over. I kiss his wounds and we start all over. He says he'll never leave me, but it's all I can do to keep myself from drinking him down deep and then out the door for good. 

You and Me Under the Sky

I lifted up my soul to the sky and realized the connection between. We are all atoms, together in one body. The darkness and the light, negative and positive charges, flying around like magnets, centered by proton-peace. A rainbow of reality just beneath the heavy grey veil. I can see glimpses of it but never the whole. Only through your lungs have I breathed the truth in oxygen. You've experienced the clouds, the heaven above and the hell below, relaying the sights to me through backwards binoculars. I cannot see as you have seen, but I love the way you talk about the view. Your lips drip symphonies, the notes like inner tubes to float on the river. Downstream there is no judgement. Jealous of your understanding, I hide in my warm bed of ignorance and let this anger wash me to sleep. Why can't I escape from this? Trapped in the Matrix of past and future, I long to be in the present with you, only with you, and what we have. My soul already married yours. Why does anything else matter? Tied to you with cords too strong to break, too soft to hurt, I know I'm never leaving, and you're never leaving. And fuck everyone else's opinions, fuck the darkness in the background. We've been through too much to let this dust get thick. Let me love you, let me let you love me. I'll look through your eyes and learn where the water comes from. I'll let go of my black and white and let the colors take over. Give me your kaleidoscope and I'll give you my heart. Nothing else matters now. Just you and me under the sky.

I'm So Sentimental

AS LONG AS YOU LOVE ME

NOTHING ELSE MATTERS

EXCEPT FOR STOP SIGNS

AND WORLD HUNGER

AND OBVIOUS SHIT LIKE THAT

Stay Classy San Diego

When I stepped off the bus in San Diego, I could smell the vibrations and taste the heat. I walked to the hostel with a guitar on my back and a knife in my hand, afraid of everyone I passed. I was a little girl away from home, alone at last, but for the very first time. My blood ran acidic until I reached the gas lamps. There, the crowd smiled a collective smile at me. I realized that I was home.

I left half of my heart in your ocean, San Diego. I soaked half of my heart in your salt, Coronado. I thought I would stay there with you forever, serenading the streets with my hat on the ground for your coins to fall into. I thought I would start over with you, it's true, I thought I would never leave. 

I left half of my spirit at the Greyhound station. I left half of the wind in my lungs on the corner of 7th and Island. I left half of my brain on the concrete where the vagrants slept. I thought I would return for it, but now I don't think I ever will.

I came back to Denver with my strength doubled. I was bound and determined to do right, to be perfect. With a new life inside of me, with an expectation in my womb, I disowned my danger and denied my feet their dance. "I just want to be a good mom," I said. "That's all I want now." But I lied.

I need what I left with you back, San Diego. Send me my courage in the mail, Coronado. I need back the honey that fell from my lips there, that husky-voiced tune, my cartwheel into the ocean. I need my daughter, and I need more than my daughter. I need my self. I need Shelby. 

Maybe I'll see you again, San Diego.

Give me back what you took from me. 

I just need to be whole. 

#selfie

Here in our hearts where the sacred lies, we splay ourselves open like we unzip our coats. We use no discretion as we sow these wild oats. The cameras follow us to sleep like the paparazzi. Hashtag no makeup. Hashtag all natural. Hashtag no filter. Let the masses see us naked in the limelight as we litter. Our precious moments are on the ground like cigarette butts, our proverbial lungs are filled with cancer, and this girl on the other side, she wants to be a dancer. Pictures in her lingerie all over the worldwide, tangled in her own web, desperate to be fed. Our former selves didn't have the foresight to assume this narcissistic self-hate, our unironic minds that keep nothing private. MySpace top eight nostalgia, allow me to share my dreams with you. Affirm my worth and watch my days float down the river with me. Throw up your once-Poliroids, your weddings and your babies, your depression and your positive vibrations, show the world your life in albums and one-liners, what are we coming to if not to the bottom? I used to be in therapy but now I self-medicate with the use of all-new technology that gives me the power to write what I ate for lunch in stone, and code. It makes me feel important, like everyone cares, and everyone understands, but everyone lies. Hash tag forever alone. Hash tag but at least I have my cat. Rock yourself to sleep on the winds of this false security. Nobody cares that you can't sleep tonight. The dark is still dark when you turn on the light. And your life moves on, while you sit back, to get a photograph, of just, the right, angle, but you never step into your own picture, and live. 

I'm just ranting

I don't remember how to write poetry anymore. 

This is just the way it is now. Ever since my daughter was born, it's like nothing will come out. It's like she dragged all of my literary devices with her on her way out of my womb. She makes me too tired to pick up a pen and too happy to be depressed. I used to do my best writing when I was wide awake and hopped up on coffee at 2 AM. And I definitely used to do my best writing when I was depressed. So I think she's definitely the reason. She makes me smile too much.

It's a good thing. It really is. I'd rather be happy than write beautiful things. Eighteen-year-old Shelby would smack me for saying that, but it's just true now. I'd rather walk in the sunshine than write in the rain. 

I don't know if this makes me less of an "artist" or what. Stephen King insists that he writes better when his wife is happy, his life functional, his alcoholism and drug addictions all rehab-ed out of his system. Elizabeth Gilbert thinks the whole "tortured artist" trope is totally unnecessary, and you can be an optimist and a great writer. But frankly, I don't want to write like Stephen King or Elizabeth Gilbert, because they're really not that great (you know it's true). 

But then again, they're making all the money. J. K. Rowling isn't a tortured artist, and she wipes her ass with hundred-pound notes. Meanwhile, Jack Kerouac died poor and alone. So I guess what I'm saying is, maybe I got the really, really long end of the stick here. Maybe writing things inspired by my rainbows-and-butterflies-status happy life will make me loads of money. I just need to figure out how to make it come out of the typewriter.

I mean, where do you even start? I can't make the jump from writing Unitarian-Universalist we-are-all-one-soul prose and occasionally-semi-erotic, usually-littered-with-f-words, gritty-mess flash-fiction to writing like, Christian-inspirational non-fiction. Perish the thought. I would jump off a building rather than see my book sold at Family Christian Book Store, and if that makes me a bad Christian, I'll work it out with Jesus later. I just want to write something good, and good means not cheesy. If I'm a delusional narcissist for ultimately hoping that a novel that I write is assigned high school reading in the US by the time I die, then fine, but it's still what I want, and it's still not going to happen as long as I'm this blocked. I can't even type a line without having an anxiety attack anymore. Nothing I write is good enough. There's no darkness to pull from in my life, only light. I can't even explain how grateful I am for that, how happy I am to be so far away from depression that I barely remember how it felt. But at the same time, I need to find a way to write again. I need to find a way to fit within my skin all the things that I am, and all the things that I want to be: a good mother, a good girlfriend, optimistic and sunshiny, but also a good writer, an honest writer, a completely-opposite-of-cliche writer.

As soon as I figure out how to accomplish this, I'll bottle it and sell it, or I'll at least let you know.

Eighteen/Sixty two

A hunched old couple walks into my restaurant. "It's our first date," the man says with a straight face. The woman feebly slaps him on the arm with her wedding-ringed hand. They both laugh at this joke with a look between them that says, "We laugh together a lot." 

The man is wearing thick bifocals. The woman, I guess, forgot her glasses at home. He patiently reads her the print on the menu, too small for her to decipher alone. 

"We'll both have Chicago dogs," he says. 

"And Pepsi Colas," she follows. 

I ask them because I'm curious. Of course I'm curious. "How long have y'all been married?"

"Sixty two years," the man says with a proud smile. I feel my face muscles do a smiling dance. 

"Oh wow," I say. "How old were you when you got married?" 

"We were eighteen," he answers, those yellowing teeth flashing me again. "It was during the Korean War. Y'ever heard of it?" 

I nod like that isn't a stupid question. "Yes sir," I answer.

"Well we young men were getting drafted," he says. "That was the thing to do then. Get yourself a wife so you had something pretty to come home to." 

If I could describe the way his wife's eyes light up...it's less like a Christmas tree and more like Rockafeller Plaza. 

He pats her hand. "Yes ma'am," he says, staring into the air. "Sixty two years." 

"Congratulations to you," I say. I walk away slow, and hide my face as I round the corner. Then I start to cry. 

We Melt Together Like Grilled Cheese

Your idiosyncrasies are health to my atoms. My electrons whir with the noise of a ghetto-rigged toaster making sideways grilled cheese. Things have changed because we changed them. I have changed because of you. I am the noises you make. I belong to the looks on your face. When you have nightmares, I have nightmares. The more we melt together, the more I find of myself. 

Frankly, I can't say I'd be nothing without you. I'd be something. Something like a vegetable. Stagnant and bored, I'd smell like glycerine and disappointment. Luckily you're still with me. You're still here and I still matter. I still buzz with your electro-magnetism, and the toxic waste of our mistakes is too far down river to taste.