Can you imagine a more beautiful view
than the one designed just for you?
From the shelter you built
where the birds often sit
the palms always dance at sunset.
There you are in your seat
watching it all feel complete
knowing full well
that from what you can tell
you’re the reason the birds come to visit.
And what of the power of words?
forged in our minds, sealed in ink
made physical the sins that we think
***
It’s not unlike us to search for truth
even when bound, we find a way
to make timeless what we can’t say
***
On paper it would seem
the pressure releases, slowly
and our pens touch all that is holy
Blizzard road. Red lights paving the way. Pretending to be asleep when we park outside the house. Papa carries my limp body to bed. He smells like cigarettes, pine and honey.
He tucks me in and kisses my forehead. Later I hear him and Mama talk in the kitchen. The crack of a bottle. Red, blue and green lights flicker in the living room while songs of chestnuts and reindeer play loud enough to make out some of the words.
Family parties full of noise and energy. The buzz of anticipation and infinite play. Bacalhau, baked potatoes, the smell of garlic and wine.
Fifty different conversations happening all at once, a low hum you want to live inside forever. Those days are gone. But I remember them like they still live on separately.
I can’t see them anymore, but I know they’re there.
At dusk, when the neighbors’ lights turn on, you can hear football in the living room and smell dinner on the table. They’re laughing about something you’ll never know, but it feels like you’re there. I take comfort in walking past the intimate moments of someone else’s life. It’s like I’m home even when I couldn’t be farther from it. Whether I’m here or not, home never dies. It’s in the sounds and warm hues of the apartments come to life on a Monday night.
Isn’t it beautiful how comfortable we can be with the unfamiliar? Strangers don’t feel strange when you see them in their homes. You can picture yourself there, watching the game. Serving a glass. Warm.
How many times have people walked past our apartment and felt at home there? What would they see? Our bodies dancing wildly under Christmas lights, our laughter, our cries, our conversations which wouldn’t make sense out of context — but what might they sound like to a stranger? Hues of green within a concrete hug in the spring, brick memories of molasses in the summer. I wonder if our essence follows them.
If there is a sixth sense and we can feel it sometimes, I think it’s when we feel connection with what’s unfamiliar. That would explain why we can adapt so quickly. Why two lonely islands can be brothers once they’ve met. Home follows. It doesn’t choose. It runs through time with you.
I think that’s why I love stories about time travel. Shows like Outlander fascinate me because characters find themselves hundreds of years in the past and manage to adapt because the fundamentals of connection don’t change. If we each have incarnated as energy or souls time and time again, it would explain why it’s the most natural things that make me feel the most. Flame, flower, fog. Books, beer, bumble bee. Music, mother, magic. I could find beauty in any time after a while. In the unfamiliar, which eventually becomes home.
Right now I see the flicker of my mystic rose candle, my stone goddess and buddha head. I see the tree that greeted me when we moved here and the cinnamon roof of the neighbor’s house across the street. I wonder how many times they’ve seen us naked. How many times they’ve seen us in general. I’ve only seen them a few times behind the blinds. The sky is a muted blue, somber as a blanket. The grass is never quite green enough, always a light dusting of death to remind us of the fires. But it’s home now.
#bloganuary #bloganuary2023
A Piece of Me
From my insides you will find a tenderness so sweet
it rots the marrow of my bones.
Saudades for all that was and all that could be,
Tendons full of music, bursting, waiting to dance.
I can feel your heart.
I can see your spirit.
When the wind cries, when the moon shines, when the world is still
I know all is well.
ungrounded, unmotivated, unmoving.
walking in squares and hitting dead ends just to repeat it again.
i don’t know what’s happened to me
or to my dearest.
all tangled in electric knots, in mounds of pity
and I wish to whoever’s god that I could start over
try on a new avatar
leave it behind
without adding more sorrow or sinking the ship further.
so naturally, i’ll have to stay
one more day
and probably the rest too if that’ll make it better for them.
When I close the blinds
and prying eyes don't look inside
an ease of my strokes
is much easier to find
It's by removing the lens
that I unearth again
the truth of creation
without any of the pretense
For the river never stops
whether you come to watch
or lest you forget
nature runs without clocks
Remember your worth
when there's no one around
paint what you feel
and so on and so forth
You don’t need to have groundbreaking ideas every day, but you should find meaning in every moment. Even when poetry is the last thing I can get myself to write, I see it all around me. I see it in the way the power lines on my street look like crosses and in the scent of new flowers about to bloom. It’s in the shrill echoes of the police sirens and in the voices of people going out for drinks on my block. All of these small everyday details find ways to command attention, which is why for today’s #bloganuary challenge I’m going to try to write a poem when I’m not inspired.
. . .
don’t fear quiet
and wish for filled spaces
your head doesn’t have to be hell
if you use it well
solitude can be solace
emptiness whole
in the presence of everything
you’re never alone
Striding toward the sun
linked arm in arm,
we always dive in headfirst.
We’ll make friends with squirrels
and fly with birds
until it’s time to reset.
I’d rather be idle
than on the go
when he looks so happy here.
Because life is simple
at its most grand,
blessed freedom and mother’s rays.
Do you ever catch glimpses of the sun between dark patches of old?
When the world opens up for you like a woman and shows you the way
Suddenly every road, every stone is a gift to unfold.
Mariana R. Cabral 