Promises

Promises

For Last Poet Standing round 2

February 2015

Keep the promises you make yourself,

Because sometimes they’re the only ones

You can trust.

By twelve years old, I was pretty sure promises

Weren’t worth the air the words took.

“I promise things will get better,” they said.

“I promise I’ll always be there.”

But drifting, separate schools, work--

The promises were only air, and you can’t trust air.

So I promised myself, age twelve, to keep breathing anyway.

Some promises are too hard to keep alone,

I was failing, falling, burning.

And then I met him.

I sat down on the bench

Because he was reading a book,

After all the betrayal of flesh and blood and air,

Ink was one thing I could trust.

So we sat and talked and

I had a friend, again.

I built up my trust, still wary of words just spoken,

Careful of my back facing anyone but him,

The only one I could trust to be there

When I huddled in a high school library corner,

White-hot mania pressing into my eyes

Or the numbing void of depression filling my guts with lead.

He’d hold me, and I’d say, “I’m sorry.”

A shaking head, a hand on my arm

“I’m here, I’m here. I Promise.”

16 is too young for declaring eternal love,

And I didn’t want to ruin what we had, whatever it was, but

I’d never felt this way about anyone before.

As cliché as it sounds, it was true then.

Is true still,

And I’d promised myself I’d never let a chance at happiness

Slide through my fingers.

Then I got the email, fitting that it come in ink not worthless air:

“hey, anna, do you want to go to that mormon prom thing? with me?”

And fingers trembling, I typed back, yes.

There were more promises then, to myself, to him,

To others. I learned to trust the air again, the spoken things,

They all credited therapy, I credited the one who

Held me and listened.

He told me I didn’t have to,

 But I promised I’d wait for him,

And I did, faithful letters every week.

When he came home, we watched our movie. Up.

The one we watched the day I first kissed him

And he said, “I can see us like that,”

And crossed his heart.

Take it slow, we said.

Promised.

I was 21 and the world was so much brighter than it had been

When I promised myself I’d live,

Even in the rain.

We sat on the porch swing in the gardens,

Leaning against each other and

Speaking about forever.

“Will you marry me?”

He asked it when I was laughing and looking away

So I didn’t see my grandmother’s ring at first

But there it was.

Yes.

He promised, I promised,

The ring didn’t even need to be resized

And every time I was sick or sad I touched it

Remembered I was loved.

I sat down in December to write a poem to my 12 year old self,

Maybe the promises made to me were true, it does get better.

I was 21, 11 months and 4 days,

And checking my email while Christmas shopping.

The subject line was, Love you.

He signed off with, I hope we can still be friends.

10 years of friendship and I didn’t even get a phone call to shatter my heart

Like a glass ornament falling from a tree.

I had always promised myself I would not fall to pieces over a boy,

Like some soap opera character too weak to stand.

All the crossed hearts and promises to be there

To be there

To be there

Not worth the air they took.

Keep the promises you make to yourself

Because sometimes they are the only ones you can cling to.

I am 22 and my left hand still feels naked,

But I promised myself, keep breathing anyway.

June 29th to December 17th

I’d hate that porch swing,

where we both sat, laughing as the rain

came down around us,

but why waste hate

on sunwarmed slats of wood?

It is time to make new memories

and move on, I know.

I know. But it still

hurts.

That is nothing new.

Swings never go anywhere,

not really.

Just back and forth, chained in place.

Caught, like me

between a diamond and a naked hand

Petrichor

I still love the rain.

I always have, even after so many storms.

I remember kissing you in the rain

during our lunch break

somehow both as cold, wet, uncomfortable

and romantic as it seems.

And the thunderstorm

the day we sheltered in a porchswing

and didn’t count it a loss,

a garden walk ruined

but laughed

and listened to the lion roar

and the pattering of rain around us

You held out a ring

my fingers wet, I took it.

And the flood, rain for hours, washing

away everything I owned,

but I pulled through.

Things can be replaced.

But that flood was nothing

placed against the clear december sky

six months later,

when I lost everything I thought I had with you

with an email that opened with

I love you

and ended with

let’s still be friends.

We are not “Still Friends.”

And now the rain comes again,

thunder rolling in the purpled sky.

Petrichor is in the air, the smell of rain,

which is the smell of you.

Ballroom Slippers

Mudspattered and roadworn

they are still lovely.

The gold embroidery,

catching in the candleflicker

and the mossy grey leather

suple as beechbark,

are tarnished by the dust

of walking miles for this night.

Her skirts twitch up, floating

as she floats, finding her heartbeat

with the trilling of the oboe d’more

and the swell of strings.

She is not the most beautiful,

no belle of the ball,

not in a hand me down gown

and old slippers

but still she dances, and still she is

beautiful.

Lark Wing

“Hope is the thing with Feathers”

I read that poem over and over,

making sense of it in a new way

each time.

Hope is a bird, that much

I pieced together without prompting.

And you never could reach out and touch one,

so it fit.

The birds were always on the other side of glass

a promise cut off. I reached for that hope

but you can’t own it,

open the cage door and it flies away.

And I thought, yes, this

is true.

Hope was like the sparrows my cat caught,

toyed with, let live just long enough for the light

in their eyes to die.

Hope was like the bushtits, tiny and frail

brought down by January wind.

And I wondered, why call Hope a song bird,

something easily killed,

a lump of feathers and a tiny heart?

But they come back, too, see?

The wild ones, migrating home,

following the wind currents and the sun.

Maybe, some  desperate part of me said,

things would really get better, if I hung on.

The poem keeps going,

past what’s written on plaques, speaking of storms.

My own storm,

full of lightning cuts and salt spray,

seemed too much,

but in the end I still breathed,

birdsong echoing in my ears.

Hope might be the thing with feathers

that perches in the soul,

but the poem sits in my heart and mind,

tiny talons clinging, tangling themselves in wild hair.

Hope sings.

Sometimes the bird’s muted, far off,

but the tune has no end,

a hermit thrush’s backwards waterfall--

a chickadee calling her own name.

Hope is a songbird mama,

pulling out her own feathers to cushion my bones

scraped against each other,

nesting there until I am strong enough to stand.

Hope is the lark’s wings, beating the wind

like a heart against ribs

living.

Hope is the light of galaxies

not stuck in the sky but across a starling’s back

Hope is the thing with feathers,

the bird come home, returning to sing  

a song I cannot forget the words to.

Mountain Midnight

There is no such thing as silence

or total darkness

not here, snuggled into a bedroll

on Melissa Corey Peak.

I am the last awake

everyone else (over two hundred of us)

is worn from the day,

21st century children

walking into the past

shirts, skirts, shoes all  heavy with dust.

My eyes are fixed on the dome

above.

The sky is no flat thing

like back home,

a sheet tacked to the ceiling

grey with fog and light pollution,

no.

Here
it is darkness, lit up

blue-black silk reaching down

in all her speckled splendor,

past the horizon formed by hill and treeline,

below my body
so that I

so small and significant

am suspended
surrounded by the gleaming.

The wind, with the smell of cold

sings through our campsite,

sends the summer-dried sagebrush rattling,

and I shiver

shudder, but cannot bring myself

to shield my face

and stop looking at the stars.

Tempest’s teapot

I was the smallest in the 8th grade

4 feet, 10 inches of terrified.

Trapped in darkness--

Blinding, literal darkness,

scored with one slash of light

at the bottom of the door

--a bleeding wrist.

Like my body,

the closet was too small for the storm:

fear, sweat, tears, snot, salt on my tongue

as I bruised my fists on the door and begged

for help that I knew

was. not. coming.

Because it was Friday after school,

before spring break,

and half the class knew where I was.

They let the door lock with a click,

jackal laughter, and then all that was left was me.

Alone in the dark.

Trembling, I was a tornado, a hurricane,

of salt spray and the breath ripping

from my lungs.

I am going to die I don’t want to die.

Please someone please

Years later, I remember the door opening.

They told me it was only twenty minutes

but it felt like years,

like I had forgotten what light was

and warm and safe.

I had forgotten how

to breathe.

And I forget again, as, for an object lesson

the teacher shuts the door,

clicks off the light.

My ears ring with my rescuer’s words

“It must have been an accident.”

8 years and three inches later

I am still too small for this tempest.

East of the Sun

I heard a woman say,

“I won’t let my daughter read

fairy tales,”

And other chimed in with,

What do they teach, really

Cinderella let herself

be abused, had to be

rescued.

Belle married a kidnapper

gave up her dreams

Sleeping Beauty slept through

her own story.

I sat on my hands,

bit my tongue to hold in the words

red as blood, white as bone, black as ink.

Have you ever sat down with Grimm,

Calvino, Moe, Lang, Perrault in your lap

and read a fairy tale?

Look at these girls, women,

spanning centuries

passed down over fires

fire-filled themselves.

With names or without,

they last, beautiful as the moon

inside and out.

Isn’t that what these stories teach?

For a moment, close your eyes

hold the book in your hands,

fat cracking leather

cloth binding worn away

paper spine bent double,

and listen to the stories.

Older than ink, but younger

barely, than imagination.

Listen to the stories of

Perina, braving three rivers

blood, bile, and brine

for the sake of her own name

and oath.

Cinderwretch, breaking the cycle

of cruelty and letting herself

love fierce and free

and be loved again.

Gerda, who , seeing a frozen heart

melts it with the heat

of her tears,

half frozen herself.

Beauty, her own antagonist

but true to her word

as friendship blooms

like little-linda roses.

The Lass, who holds her own destiny

in her hands like a candle dripping wax

and walks, head high

East of the sun.