She strings the lights
more gold than white
A moment of peace, warmth
Broken by angry words
With teeth that eat at her soul
She sings, dances to anything but
Christmas music
The artificial pine needles scraping
Her hands ’til they bleed
She welcomes this pain
That hurts less on the outside
She rests awash in the glow of
One thousand one hundred lights
And thinks she understands why people
Cut, carve, slice into their skin
To let the inside out
She types on her phone
Silent, edgeless words
Knowing she won’t let him have that
She won’t pick up the shards he spits
Won’t let them become the broken glass that maims her
She did it once
Before
A long time ago
She still has the scar
He can’t have another
She breathes
In the late-night solitude
Breathes
One breath at a time
Beneath a thousand lights
And one silver star
Cup of Tea (Because I actually don’t drink coffee) | Photo by Nichole Liza Q.
If we were having coffee right now I would be laughing or crying or ranting. It depends on which me shows up.
If default-Nichole showed up, I would tell you about how I busy I am, how I love my job and my family and my friends and creating things and fleshing out ideas. How my girls are becoming beautiful women and my dearest friends. How my husband, somehow, all at once, drives me absolutely nuts and yet amazes me with his undeserved love and loyalty. I would tell you that lately, God speaks to my heart in ways so deep they can hardly be searched out and formed into words. And I would listen. I would listen to you and laugh with you and love you.
If grieving-Nichole showed up, I would tell you through tears that I don’t know how to do this thing we call life anymore. That I hate what God has done to our family. I would tell you that I still startle upon remembering that my baby brother is gone. Dead and gone from this world forever. I would remind you that in the last five years we’ve lost six family members and two beloved dogs. I would tell you that my girls are growing up and leaving me and I am crushed. That their going – even the prospect of their going – feels like having the air sucked out of my lungs, like my heart and body are drying out, shriveling like dead leaves. I would tell you that I am alone. And I am lost.
Bare knees in damp, midnight grass
She leans her head over the creek Her reflection just a shadow, rippling Framed by dancing starlight For a moment, she forgets Her sandpaper throat Dipping her hand in the cold water She forms a leaky bowl with fingers, palm Carrying liquid silver to her lips She swallows the stars
My first ever “found” poem, written in response to Writing 201 | Poetry, Day 6: Faces, Found Poetry, Chiasmus. I “found” my poem on page 135 of ‘Til We Have Faces by C.S. Lewis, one of my favorite books. Judge for yourselves how well I met the requirements. I had fun doing this – though I think the design part of the process gave me an ocular migraine…seriously, though. Pic and text poem both below:
Say more than gods
When the moon’s full
The King himself sacrifices a man, the Word
Determined, He answered
What’s unsaid
In the valley, dark
When gods say nothing
I can’t stand the skin I’m in. I say that often, in my mind, at least, which lies trapped behind my eyes, within this skin. Oh, to claw my way out, scratch through burning layers of anger and regret, scrape away the anxiety and worry and fear and foreboding that crawl all over my arms and legs and back and knees like a plague, a curse, a damned itch I cannot scratch, peel back the sorrow and the shame, and leave the slough behind me on the unforgiving earth. Maybe then, maybe then I would be free.
It’s a terrible thing when you can’t stand yourself. A terrible, lonely thing.
Because there’s no getting out and there’s no getting in. My mind, my soul, my spirit begin and end inside this skin. This prison-skin, this divided mind, this hermetic heart that followed the fall. We touch and tangle, flesh on flesh – handshakes, hugs, and making love – always aching, reaching to be un-alone, to be known – but even when two become one, there’s three.
The pain burns, stings, like a thousand cuts carved into my skin, on my hands, my feet, across my chest, my stomach, my back. I can almost feel the blood oozing out like tears – my whole body weeps. My whole body weeps, shudders, shakes. I need to vomit. To expel this wretched wrong. This thing I can’t undo. This end. Which is an ending I never would have written but was written for me instead – for us all – but most of all, for him.
I am raw and broken. And sick. So sick. Only I can’t throw it up. There’s always more – more pain, more sorrow, more regret churning and burning its way through my soul.
Oh God. How can you ask me? How can you ask me to do this?
You color me in and then erase me. Drain me. To the dregs. And dregs are all I have left.
But You can’t blame me. I can blame me. I can be angry and live with regrets and could haves and should haves and would haves. But not You. Because You let this happen. You did. There’s no denying it.
So when I am nothing, when I am just sludge and scar tissue, You won’t ask why. You won’t dare look at me with surprise. You can’t possibly be surprised. You know the end from the beginning. You knew this. You knew this day. You knew this pain, too.
What if I can’t forgive You? What then? What if You and me are never the same? What have You done? Could You destroy “us”? Would You?
I think somewhere deep inside I know the answers, but today the pain is louder. Like the roaring winds of a hurricane. I hear nothing else. I feel nothing else. I am deaf to all but the screaming of my soul as I am peeled apart, layer by layer, flesh torn open and packed with salt.
Here, truth and comfort are merely words, tiny letters which, rearranged, can mean anything…or nothing at all. Meaningless. Meaningless. I spin around the eye of the storm. There is nothing but the pain.
Lightning Bug 
