Going and Going

This little death I have died

this thursday afternoon

is a really beautiful death

although not my best one yet

I have died more desperately before

But this time! This time-

In the slow earth, on the railway

that leapt from the city to the sleeping sea

I kissed a besieged shoreline

And waited, and thought

How a shade of orange so sacreligious

had crept from where I had first planted my feet

up my spine through my heart and into my head

and stayed, slept, and

Evening in the lonely train car, low buzz of my heart

buzz that means- I deeply appreciate the orange

of these seats

Oh they remind me of love- the shy kind

A shy shade of orange

Which I decided was my favorite where I sat

outside of a bathroom door, when I was five

I was sitting outside waiting for my mother

I called her mama then

I was waiting so I could tell her I had just decided

that my favorite color is orange

Did she care? I can’t remember

It was probably her own way of saying-

The world is big, mean, and we all decide our favorite color, someday

I guess today is someday for you

Oh, and

Tomorrow you turn six

I guess I had forgotten

About birthdays- I was just so excited about orange

And even then- I wondered how bread was made

If I could grow like a tree

If I would need glasses

If I would always love orange

If I would always love my mother

And even now, I wonder

about the impatient expressway

Breathing down my back, the color of traffic

is a nosebleed red, kissing with a mouthful of blood

And on any highway my laughter

is the shade of strawberry on my face, seeds

between my teeth

And there’s a soft prayer stuck

under my tongue

For the car to spin out on the wet asphalt

My blood a shade of strawberry

Or, on a lucky night

The kind of red that colored the raspberries

We used to pick in the summer, how I would

stand under the sun and ask forgiveness from god

Sunday’s after mass with a head full of words I didn’t believe

But

I had looked too long at a girls legs

And I would roll the raspberries slow over my tongue

And think atonement is red as blood

And raspberry pie on a July night

Still I’d like to stay alive for Saturdays

When I am all purple, lilac-blushed

The color of a fisherman’s wives tale

How my father once told it to me-

when the lilacs start to bloom the weak fish will be in the sea again

How weak fish have the same pale purple flush

As the flowering lilacs in the pregnant springtime

But my father had been in the sea his whole life

And really, lilacs meant the trout were in season again

Weak fish showed up when the azaleias pinkened

In the path alongside our house, right below

My bedroom window, the bedroom that had once

been mine, but now is my baby sister’s

And my father told me how

once he had pulled too hard on the line caught

with a weak fish, and pulled up

only it’s jaw

And I have died so many deaths

Like a thousand flocking birds

pounding in my sun-eaten chest

And still nothing beats the earth

the wet brown of dirt under a hot sun

the stain of your hands and knees

after all day kneeling in the garden

Up to your elbows in earth, little winged insects

landing on the tanned skin of your April arms

The underbelly of the grass, how it springs up green

from the softest brown bed

How I once kissed a girl, late one Sunday night

Took her hand and took the train

down to that spot in the city where a creek drips

cavernous through the reeds

It was frog-catching water, mud on our ankles

And to kiss was to eat the earth

And to love was atonement

And I bet I taste bitter

But I don’t feel like taking a bite out of my own skin

And I bet I am the color orange

Smiling in the face of some awful sin

And life was a gentle creature wandering around the empty desert

Four wounded legs

Going and Going