(polaroid spectra/expired polaroid image softtone film)
we walk around whole and fragmented, images fuzzy and soft in a mirror that reflects back nothing and everything
and our voices rise in passionate outbursts
until we realize that what we are saying is interpreted very differently than our soul’s thought
because no one has the full picture, not even you.
there are too many variables, too many events that turn into memories that become deeper and more vibrant in the remembering and the importance becomes a bloated dead fish laying on a fog stained beach after the tide has come in, gone out, breathed in, breathed out.
monkey see
monkey do
hold your hands over your ears and hum a familiar refrain while chanting i can’t hear you i can’t hear you all the while knowing i hear all your words but i can’t understand you anymore than you can understand me and the best we can hope for is a soft sigh to lay our heads in our deepest moments of doubt and a friendly smile holding zero expectations and perhaps the warm body of a dog who understands what it is to be rejected and yet opens up his heart to you anyway because that is what hearts do, they open easier than they close even after they have been left out in the cold.
and i talk in riddles because i am not really saying anything and yet if you listen carefully, you will find yourself and that is everything
and the picture doesn’t show the way the sun streamed in, billowing a white froth of curtain across the bedspread or the smile that came easily and the remembrance that it wasn’t always that way. and the reality doesn’t show the long stop motion moments that preceded the moment. and the deep indented hug of remembrance. her soft brown dyed hair and the way it felt as i wound it around the curlers and her soft sunny reflection looking up at me through that very mirror propped up on the kitchen table that has since been discarded along with the linoleum and the walls that held the life of a family long since gone. but the heart remembers even after the last funeral hymn has been sung because that is what hearts do, they open easier than they close even after they are buried deep beneath the earth’s womb.
and i walk around whole and fragmented, images stark and crystal clear in a mirror that reflects back nothing and everything
and i wipe a soft cloth over the fingerprints
even as i can’t resist placing my palm lovingly over the freshly washed glass.