Poems from in between

i.

all last things
packed into tiny bags,
duties, remembrances,
cleavages, rejoinders

peeling back slivers
of known things,
yet to learn things —
putting them aside

ii.

It is a kind of love to be sure
that draws us into this chapel
to tend your last things,

a blouse, a parent, a book,
a lunch break tucked with care,
untucking themselves as they will.

It is not too much to bear, no,
not in the way I might have thought;
it is just the reliable ever-shifting

of what you can hold onto, how you
have to find your bearings again and again
and how you wonder what is real after all,

all disorientation. When I was a child,
I begged God to be honest with me,
not to lie just to make everyone happy.

So here I stand with all lies
peeled back by God’s constant razor
feeling my way towards holding on.

iii.

I want to kill the world
the world that saunters by
that with its lazy feet

averts forgetting eyes
I want to kill this world
this world that saunters by

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Another for Sandra and now for others, too. I thought this one would be less angry. And then that last section popped out. Sorry!