Every day is a To Do list,
things to write, things to read,
things to begin, things to finish.
Fear of forgetting thoughts, fear of missing out.

I don't know how to say 
to hell with it all, I don't care, clear the deck, 
cross the items off and start fresh.
Sleep is elusive, a tangled landmine,
a thousand shards of 
unfinished, broken ideas 
festering underfoot.

Life is light 
and I am afraid of the dark.


Speaking of Fears:
In case Facebook goes away, please feel free to subscribe to this, whatever this is. 
Blog? Journal? To Do list? <g> 
There's a link somewhere on this page. Let me know you are out there. As the good book says: "Don't make no difference what nobody says. Aint nobody like to be alone."

I lost two babies on
September 11th,
1990.
I delivered them. They were not alive.
I never saw them beyond the blood.
I have their photos
But I am afraid to look.
Twin A and Twin B.
This day is never easy.
How ironic.
My twin towers.
My 9/11.
We all fall down.

I called my mother every day
Just to hear her voice.
“Are you okay?” I asked.
“Are you okay?” she asked
That’s all we needed to know.
Those calls are over and it will never be okay.
Now I’m the mother
texting my children every day, asking
“Are you okay?” and
waiting for my children to check in every day
to find out if I’m okay.
Sometimes I am not
but I don’t want them to know.
I wonder now how often
my mother reassured me
all was well and
she was okay,
when all was not well, when she was not okay.

Insomnia is the only thing

that keeps me awake at night.
I wrote this line in a poetry chat earlier and I made myself chuckle.

Sometimes we sample ourselves.

Lil’ P

Don’t bother

They’re here

Move over, Stephen Sondheim.

Have I got a song for you.

Write an elegy for the end of summer, the last picture show of orange sun and cappuccino flesh and verdant leaves of grass.

Autumn elbows in, impatient for its stage cue.

Here it comes. Enter, laughing.

Send in the clowns.

I thrive on the page and stage, your presence and pleasure from things I share give me air and life. Applause is an upper.

“I can see it from my house.”

And so begin the Days of Awe.

What a collision of worlds today. The end of summer, perfectly fused with the onset of a new year for people I break challah days with when the time is right.

Sweetness, ushered in. Flood damages, dumped to dump.

Aw.

The transformation is complete.

I am officially my mother and father. Working on a tan as if I never had skin cancer.

I’m outside by a pool, eating fruit, blasting Elvis Presley, and forgetting I have a woe in the world.

I walk into a pool, hands on hips, not interested in getting my hair wet. I lean against the edge and work on crossword puzzles.

What’s next on the playlist? Jerry Vale? Vic Damone? Frank Sinatra? Jackie Mason on Broadway? (That enduring image of my dad at the outdoor pool at the Catskills hotels, putting cassettes into a portable radio player and not sure if the volume was on is a mental painting I wish I could paint.)

It’s Labor Day in reverse. Giving birth to the soul and spirits of those that brought me to this moment.

It is mid-afternoon on Long Island. Not exactly Green Acres territory. We have traffic. Diners. People. Lots of people.

Why do we have roosters?

What is the point? A neighbor nearby hasn’t figured out roosters are noisy and needless.

There she crows again!

When you ask for a “stack of napkins,” what do you expect?
Bring me two (as they often do) and I roll my eyes.
Bring me five and I wonder if we can actually be friends.
Bring me a stack that will last more than a minute.
How do people make it through a meal with five and under napkins?
You know I am going to ask for more within seconds.
Why drag out the dance?

Because I could not stop for sleep, come on, world, it’s almost 6 AM
Everyone else is doing it
Give me a fair shake and let me go down the back alley into a dreamscape

But there’s a long line between night and day and day and night
It is written in the stars, in the palms, in the cards
Don’t move. No one will get hurt. Put the gun of anxiety down.

Online, still. 6:30 AM. It’s safe to go through drawers left open,
letting me live in your shoes and dinners and photos
until I am done meandering, fearless, an easy steal

Borrowing cookies you have on display on the table, on the wall, on the shelf,
wondering if your smiles are more show and tell than you intended,
draining the pool and seeing the crumbling, cracked floor for the first time

and I am still awake but smirking, like the burglar.
There is blue light beyond the windows
And hours to go before I sleep.

I’d say I’ve gone fishing but I don’t fish. I don’t even like to eat fish.
My To Do list is as long as a week at the graveyard. Quiet, I suppose. Good thing no one there wants to talk or ask what I am doing with my life. I’m not in the mood to think about anything.

Happiness is two new hairbrushes arriving in the mail to replace a favorite old-timer that finally cracked in five uneasy pieces. Have you ever tried to glue a hairbrush together out of desperation? Don’t.

I ordered two new brushes online.
That felt smart.
An heir and a spare for my hair.

There isn’t a pillow that survives a month under my head.
Punching. Fluffing. Turning over and over. There are hard needles sticking out.
I am a ball of of Covid.

My feet shift all night long. I don’t know where to put them.
Left side? Right? Criss-crossed? Open, wide, straight, dangling over the edge?
I have more awkward positions than a ballet student at the barre.

Sometimes there is music. Sometimes I choose talk. Other sounds comfort me.
I am not deaf.
A room filled with silence is not an option.

I want to know the secrets of sleep.

——————————————————

This was your last sunset

before your last ride.

We were the ones howling,

beside you, bedside, begging for you to come back

While your skin stiffened, like hard, white sand,

and spun into the ocean, returning you to where you began.