gravefication

In my mind, heaven
is one narrow country road
and no streetlights.

I drive down it to meet the
fairly unconsecrated dead-
I don't enter the yard of their bodies,
but crack open the gate for their souls,
the tiny brown boys and girls

who sleep in a gentrified neighborhood
that won't be bothered to straighten
the tiny stick crosses that remember their names

(none of which the nearby residents
can bother to pronounce.)

I whisper hellogoodbye
(leaving them to
play in the impeccably maintained
schoolyard one lot over)
and slip away, because this is heaven,
and not my place.

excerpts on wanting

I can honestly, for the first time in three years, say I want completely to keep on being alive. 

 I want to force myself through yoga until my body craves it again.. I want to learn as many complex variations on language as possible. I want to go up to the woods and breathe in the clean air. I want to watch another baby be birthed, and another, and another. I want to kiss my love's face and stand in the ocean with her. I want to adore someone again without shaking with fear. I want to read Mary Oliver aloud to another person. I want to finally organize my closet. I want lashes fully grown in and eyelids that don’t burn from being yanked on. I want to become a mother. I want to enjoy the sensation of nourishing my body with mindfully eaten food. I want to trust in my body and my intuition again. I want to take responsibility.

***

I feel like I'm beginning to recognize god, more and more.

***

I'm learning to enjoy lonesomeness, to absorb the quiet and use it to speak with myself. I used to play love songs for other people, I used to find miracles in glances. I used to ache to be filled, and now I want to overflow, to be still, to give. I want to give, and give, and give, until it is easy. As Mary said, when we pray to love God perfectly,  surely we do not mean only.