 I keep trying to find the words to sum up the last year. And I keep stopping in my tracks because it was unceasingly cruel to people I know and love. 2018 left wounds that will never heal. They will scab and reopen for as long as we all breathe. I feel guilt for how my year ends while theirs drags on.
For my part, I know I crossed midnight from 2017 to 2018 in tears. I was alone and longing. In love and far from the one who loved me. I didn’t know if there would ever be a resolution, or a closing of our gap. This continued until June. The gap closed for three days in which the world around us disappeared. The chasm yawned again when he left, wider, rawer, and more uncertain, at least for me. I knew what I wanted. I knew what I needed. I didn’t know how to achieve it. In July, death came calling again after losing my dog in April. This time, when it knocked on my door, I didn’t let it in, so it went to my neighbors, my friends, instead. I spent nearly the entire month mourning. I still mourn today. I mourn not only the lights gone out, but my failures in the immediate wake of those losses; my inability to bring to fruition anything to provide a balm apart from my presence at memorials. I was barely treading water in my own sea. In August, my year began to turn. I traveled to new places with my one in six billion person. In the Las Vegas Four Seasons, on the 37th floor, he proposed to me. He said, “when you’re ready, I want to marry you.” I said yes. I said it because it felt right. I said it because this was different than before. I said it because we meant it. We wanted to be together. We wanted to build something to better each of us and not just ourselves or the other. We share goals, philosophies, and bone deep desires. I returned to my empty home, and I immediately began preparations to sell the place where dreams had been born and died for six years. I’d brought in lives and said goodbye to them. I’d made hard decisions, outgrown relationships, and found myself in the rubble. The house stood strong around me, just as it had for a century prior to my finding it. At the same time I was selling the place, I was giving notice at my job of nearly a decade, looking for and accepting a new one two thousand miles away. In mid October, I found myself saying goodbye to my chosen family, my friends, all the things good and bad I’d known for my entire adult life. My fiancé flew in and we packed a storage container in three days before driving another three with my sick, elderly cat in the backseat. I was still certain this was right even as I told my Shieldmaiden the night before I left, “I’m not avoiding you; I just need to get this packed,” while my voice broke, and we both stood together sobbing, my fiancé looking on, feeling responsible for both our pain. I began my new job a week after arriving here. About that, I was uncertain, and am still at times. It supports me financially, but it doesn’t fulfill anything deeper. It’s not a labor of love. I still don’t know what I want to be when I grow up. The entirety of the rest of my new roles has been natural, bonds forming and strengthening with little effort on my part. Other things have been harder, less seamless, but nothing is ever perfect. In December, I spent my 38th birthday feeling more loved than I have in years. My partner proposed again, this time at Donner Pass. I again said yes. Still sure of its rightness. Surer. The remainder of 2018 left me happier, in better shape in all ways than I’ve ever been, so on December 18th, I told him I was ready. We organized a small ceremony on December 22nd at the base of a mountain, standing in the snow, promising to take care of each other, to have adventures, to support the growth of our best selves, and to be best friends for as long as fate will let us. We laughed as our officiant cut out entire swaths of her words to accommodate his impatience to kiss me. While we were organizing the moments that would solidify our union, our offer on a house was accepted, cementing a place for our little family to thrive, and we currently wait in escrow to close. We spent the last weekend of the year honeymooning in San Francisco, him showing me the places he grew up, excited about my first experiences. We had dim sum in Chinatown, kissed at Fisherman’s Wharf with the seals barking behind us, and walked the beach getting caught in the tide collecting sand dollars. While I began the year in sorrow, I ended it in joy. I fell asleep next to my husband before midnight on New Year’s Eve, sober, safe, and feeling a security brand new to me. I know myself, have faith in my partner, and know that our shared dreams will come true due to determination and open communication. We make each other better each day. The work and time it took to get here seemed insurmountable most of the time we were in it, but now that it’s here, it was more than worth it. I would do all of it again. I don’t make resolutions, but I do have hopes. I want things to be easier this year. I know it will present challenges, but I want less pain, less loss, and more contentment for everyone I know. I want to keep seeing new things, falling in love each day, doing things that scare me, and strengthening the bonds I’ve forged. My hope for you is the same as my hope for myself. The work isn’t selfish. The conversations, though hard, will make you better. The leaps, small and large alike, will still advance you even when something else takes you back. I hope this year is kinder, gentler, that we all find new joys. I want our pain to be less.
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 As I box it all up
Sifting and sorting What once was wheat Now turned to chaff I found your vows On a creased yellow post-it The promise of happiness In your crooked hand Did you mean it? It’s hard now to remember The bright spots Our first day here Eating pizza on the bedroom floor Surrounded by the boxes That would fill our generation of this home I wonder Where we went wrong When I said I wasn’t happy And you said I was crazy I wonder If it was ever right at all Looking at it You could have written it yesterday But I haven’t seen you Since the day it ended And I know you haven’t changed Part of me Is sorry I don’t miss you Part of me feels cruel While the rest Is the proudest I’ve ever been So I’m moving Away On Up With a pocket full of new dreams Instead of the ash of old nightmares But I shed a single tear over them Swirled my finger in the paste it made And licked the bitter clean  18
19 21 10 10? You’re going in the wrong order. Have you forgotten how to count? Yes. I think I’ve forgotten numbers. 10 is too small. I know. 10 doesn’t belong. I know. Why 10? Because he was there, and now isn’t. Just like the others. But he wasn’t like the others. 10 is video games Santa Claus LEGO Dress up 10 is not knowing the world is cruel. 10 is... 10 was. Bright and lively and unfiltered Like sunshine on a clear day Warm and squint inducing 10 was  I am aligned with imperfection
Because I am also imperfect Not halves of a whole Broken and separated by time But pieces One ceramic One glass With sharp jagged edges Which uncannily fit together When placed one alongside the other The meeting an accident Of years of tides You beginning on one coast And I on the other Pushed eventually To the middle And showing the wear The salt sea etched But oh, your lines are lovely Beauty blushing beneath the bruises The scars A cuneiform spelling love And what we had before The lies we told To ourselves To others To convince them all That commitment Would make it better When it only got worse When we landed on rocks Harder than ourselves Fractured And sank To the forgotten bottom But wind And the moon Moved waves Moved us To the place Where we could see That when the swirling sand cleared It was you And it was me And we fit Because of the edges Not in spite of them And oh, our lines Our lives Are lovely  There are times
When you say the things that hurt Sucking out the poison Spitting it out To hiss on cold ground Instead of letting it seep osmotic Into your bloodstream Shut down your organs Reduce you To your organic compounds Eliminating the essence Of who you’ve come to be And you watch it dissipate Smokelike Into the air Like the ghost of who you were  As I age
I am learning the art Of letting it be Where I once dug And weeded And mulched Have matured berries So thick with brambles Black with juice I can pick a quart in a day The picking is an exercise in consent Prised gently between thumb and forefinger I gently ask the question Will you come with me? If I meet resistance I leave it If I get too greedy Or move too quickly Thorns embed themselves Or graze my arms My hands My feet Catching themselves In the skirt of my dress Reaching for my moon white belly But if I take my time If I let them be I am rewarded by the dark cupful More than I can eat Enough to share  It’s just as I dreamed
Our lives and fingers intertwining Like the trunks of trees Grown close Foreheads pressed together Breathing as breeze through leaves Our roots seeking the same gritty nutrient source A silent agreement to share and not compete To cut one down Would be to kill both Shattering the gentle symbiosis Created by our quirky happenstance of a beginning We will weather nature’s burdens Gnarling and silver barked A ring for each shared year Reaching heights impossible With any other or alone Don’t let me go  You said the hull would hold
The trickle nothing to worry about “You just have to bail it out sometimes” So I packed my provisions Kissed my loves farewell And climbed aboard I could smell it coming I could hear it in the gulls’ voices As they swooped around us Long before I saw the gathered clouds Roiling in the distance The wall of them more solid Than you beside me Your fair weather trickle Became our undoing Too much to scoop with a pail Now land is far away And the splinters of our vessel Have drifted Or I’ve drifted I’m treading water Arms and legs churning Beneath the surface Of the angry foam Atop my sea of storm-tossed thoughts With decisions to make In this exhausted, bruised body Hanging on to dwindling hope And your cold hand  You’re going about your day (in this case, reading), and you hit upon something common.
It triggers something in your memory like a bad smell, and you’re back there on that day, doing that thing, when you changed. For him. It was a small thing. Easy to change, and it meant saving you this kind of grief down the road. Another thing on the pile of changes you made to adjust. Until all that was left was a pile on one side, and what looked like you but wasn’t on the other. Incremental shapeshifting, the gradual emptying of yourself. Later (today), you’re right back there (because of a single word), and you wonder why you did it. Why you changed. Why so many times you bowed to it, to him. And you know it’ll never happen again. But you mourn your losses afresh. Even if you’ve recovered them. Because they were lost, and you missed them when they were gone. You missed them immediately. Surrendered to concession. But you took the easy road rather than leave. Today, the thing was reading. The word was “scythe.” The smell was the pronunciation. I changed how I said it to suit him. To avoid his derision. “It’s like ‘sigh,’” he told me in that way he has of shrinking you. Like he has of cutting through your defenses. I looked it up today. It’s like “sigh-th.” Which I always knew. I was right. I always was. But the road I take today is the high one. And he’s not here to tell him.  You feed me lines
And I lap them up Like a rasp tongued cat The bitter mash of discarded scraps Sticking to the roof of my mouth And I still say thank you Because nobody else has fed me And I don’t know the difference Between gravel and mud Except that mud goes down easier So that’s what I keep choosing |
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