time

they say it flies
often it rolls and tears
sometimes it creeps
and sneaks quickly, while you are distracted

it’s a flower that
drops its petals
far too quickly

you look around you
and they are scattered
like the pieces of your soul

changes explode all around
milestones rip past you
things you try to cling to are lost
others are found, unexpectedly

nostalgia will mock
serendipity can tease

the man holding the hourglass
has a snide grin
a cruel, jagged laugh

we all struggle to make sure
the joke is not on us
but when the laughter fades,
what side of the punchline will you be on?

always, we are progressing
through the stages of life
whether we resist the movement
or just flow

time pushes your existence
along a path that isn’t paved, but
being created by your own passage

do your feet drag lines down
your path
or are there hand prints
indicating that you did
cartwheels along the way?

your life, like time
tumbles by swiftly
and often quietly
if you let it

like the life of that flower
from bud to fragrant memory.

lets
try to stop and notice
those moments when
it is in bloom
just as often as we note
the petals that fall.

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Even if it’s a crooked rainbow with colors missing. It still counts, damnit.

This past Sunday was an anniversary.

But not the kind you celebrate with an extravagant weekend getaway.

If you’re like me, it’s the kind you await with anxious trepidation, wondering what sick emotional games your head and heart will play with you.

A year ago last Sunday I suffered a miscarriage. It was the first (but not the last) time I would experience the realized loss of a living being within.

The bottle of Prometrium prescribed by the kind, helpful, and compassionate doctor on the other end of the phone with a sobbing, fretful, worried mother that night, one year ago last Sunday, still sits in my kitchen cabinet.

I still don’t have the heart to throw it away. Yet, I have no use for it. Seeing it reminds me of the baby. That’s not a great thing, but it’s not altogether a bad thing, either. It’s just… a thing thing.

Even though that first miscarriage ripped my heart out, and then I got an injection of Unexpected Hope only to suffer another Cosmic Sucker Punch, I have experienced a bit of healing in a whole year’s time.

But I don’t want to forget. And I don’t mean forget the babies (which I most certainly will not). I mean the pain.

There is something about the pain that is left after something that tears at your heart so fiercely. There is something about it that I don’t want to lose.

That sounds crazy, doesn’t it?

Perhaps it’s just the idea that this pain is the only thing I have left of this baby (of both of these babies), and the thought of letting go of it and moving on is just… well, shitty. Unpoetic as it may be, that is the best word for it. Letting go of that pain feels shitty.

If I can smile all day long every day (even when I’m looking at the damned bottle in the kitchen cabinet), then it feels as though I have nothing left of them. As if it does not matter that they were here one moment and then gone the next.

Fault me for it if you will, but nutty as it sounds – this pain is a tragically beautiful thing, and I don’t plan on letting go of it until I am holding my babies somewhere. Whether that is in some eternal dream or Heaven, or wherever else… that’s when I’ll release this gnawing grief.

Until then, that very pain helps me appreciate every hug, flower, and ray of light in this world. Because I’m a foolish girl, and when the light of the sun shines too prettily for too long, I have a tendency to take everything that’s good in my life for granted.

This pain? The way it lingers and sometimes flares up? It taps me on the shoulder and says, “Be grateful, woman.” It’s my reminder.

I refuse to even want to let go of that.

This past Sunday, I planted flowers for our lost babies, who we call Taylor and Davin.
They were purple alyssum, a choice made in order to simultaneously bow my head to another soul that was spirited away too soon.

I could want to be numbed (and some nights, I kind of am) or I could wish for complete healing, to leave these feelings behind and forget them.

Instead I’m going to hold onto what’s left of this pain, and when it feels the most raw, I’m going to try as hard as I can to turn that prism of pain toward the light, so that it creates the most beautiful rainbow I can make that effer shoot out.

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