Father

I am half listening as he calls me down to dinner.

But the preciousness in his call always rings out to reach my ears.

He pokes his voice into the echoes of the long stairway and I can hear him shrinking.

The chords of his words take less from the silences now

As if the world has already heard all he has to say.

The fire in him,

Is now only a single glowing ember, quivering and threatening to blow out at the gust of a bad day.

He is tired most days.

But he still squeezes my hand just as tight when we pray at the table.

He is the defeated warrior who still loves what is true.

The cold rips through his days like flash floods of all the things he wants to forget.

He reminds me to write about lovely things like fire and San Francisco.

Sometimes he walks up slowly and wraps me in his arms

Like I am made of just sleepy summer vapors,

and the faint hush of a child on tip-toe,

Ready to slip away through his embrace like too many other things.

My own arms now return his stronghold and my hands lock around him as I rest in his warmth.

I hear my heart whisper then.

Telling him that he is still here,

Telling him that the world is not finished with him yet

Strings

I was up late last night.
He had come over to stand in the hollow corners covered with posters beneath my slanted roof tops.
He sat on a chair and began to move his wrists, to pluck the strings of an acoustic
making all the music that I never could.
"Hey can I listen with you?"
I don't want my ears to close up just because I'm not beautiful
or just because I'm not worth it.
he bends over all his melodic notes and plays for me the songs of yesterday.
He chuckles when he misses a chord
but his ears stay silent as he knows when the music flows.
I cross my legs and feel a warmth rise up in me as he plays me this sacred knowledge.
His passion makes me smile.
The happiness of simplicity crashes around his strings and makes them throng with something as heavy as the sun and as genuine as a Christmas morning.
I touch the walls of this night because they're coming closer.
We're making last week seem like a race we both finished and tied.
I'm thinking now that maybe it was.
I write this in a rush of gratitude at not having to feel rushed.
Poetry falls from my eyelashes like sound leaks through the calluses on his fingers.
We both have dreams to live life with the little things
that happen in mornings, evenings and afternoons
on summer days
or between snowflakes.
He lays back in a chair and tells me that someday, someone is going to remember me because
I'm a memory.
I tell him that he might have just made my day.
I tell God that night to bless this kid with a word from Jesus so that he might have a reason to stay awake in mornings.
And also that he might remember this day.
and keep humming these songs tomorrow
so that I can hear them echoing across that race that we won
and those dreams that we shared
all just until the snow finally falls on me.
And so I hear my prayer being lead back to me
and I know that as long as I don't let my ears close up,
whether about being beautiful or for worth,
I will always hear the beauty that walks around me.

Marrying the Sea

People tell me I love the oceans too much.
They tell me to marry the sea.
I say I would if I could.
Because it takes more than a love song at the end of the day to be in love.
It takes the breezy shore to blow you away and the cold waves to make your body ache.
and for the blue to take you away and love you for a while,
then set you on the dock
so you can turn your face to the day.
So you can take on the years with the salt water running through your veins.
Your feet touch what you thought was too sharp to run on.
You came with all that you are.
you came with cuts on your feet getting deeper in the sand.
You left with your scars clean and those lovely calluses that you collected from the walks you took with your sorrows.
The sea always turns you inside out
crashing into your blood and laying you down.
The oceans tell me I'm okay here.
The waves remember my soul and the blues wash me away.
Weighing my hands down to lay my sorrows at the shore,
left to congeal with the foam and broken shells.
This is what I dream.
This is me marrying the sea.

Crashing and Falling

I am whirlwinds and I am broken suns.
I am hollow shells and the beginning of nights
I am 3:00 in the morning.
I am empty cello strings and white porches.
I am cliffs and edges.
I am waves on canvas.
I am crashed into you.
My hands hold itchy blood.
I long for love.
I am in the mirror and the window.
My soul is tired.
My footprints show the blisters.
I drifted in the rain.
And here I am.
My days cry like flags in the dust when I hang them on shelves and forget to lift them again.
I long to be the sunrise in the night.
But I am the one waiting to be bright.
When I crashed, I fell.
Just like I always do.
Come to my side this day
And pick up the hope I spilled before.
Bring me a storm to make me feel strong.
Bring fire to my blood
And let it burn long.
I am sprawled where you have been.
Show me my world.
Teach me what my heart already knows.
I am a leaking engine.
I am the loudest sigh,
The song on repeat.
I long to be hit with the wind,
The kind that reminds you that you’re still alive.
For air to creep through my skin and lift up what’s inside me.
Turn me inside out and back again.
Give me something bright to scorch my hands and breathe my dreams.
Give me new fields and hold me in them.
I am the first frozen puddle
And the first to melt.
Please know that I have come from dirt and dust.
Please know that I am still listening for my heartbeat.
Please know that I am bruised and do not ask me how,
I will tell you later.
I am burning sage.
Can you see me through the smoke?
I am brash boned and shattering stars.
I am not here to say “I am weak”.
I want only to fall into your arms just once
With all that I am hanging from my shoulders.
With the nails clanking and the metal shards glittering,
With my heart shouting and the sunrise coming.
With the wheels spinning and the waves crashing
Crashing
Crashing.
That day I crashed into you.
I fell into you.
And I hoped to God that you would catch me.

Future

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future

by Melissa Wood on Friday, March 4, 2011 at 10:12pm

I will be slow to slip my hand away from the old door knob.
I will descend the deep steps with the same heaviness and hesitation.
And I know that my feet will linger on the last one.
But still, my heart or my head will speak then
And silently cheer on the launch of my feet from the ledge, and down the sidewalk path,
Through to the next open doorway.
I will be on my way.
The setting of sights,
The vast undertaking.
I will be scared to death.
Leaving this fortress I have for so long called home.
But I am sure that the back of my mind, or maybe my heart
Will be singing of the freedom I would then be looking to;
The song always there to remind myself of why I am here and why I will be “there”.
And why I have taken my heart with me this time.
Ready to carry its heavy weight to my next “home”.
Marking foreign lands with who I am.
I will go to be the pioneer and the patriot.
To lose, to fear, to love, and to live in the next new place.
And the place after that,
And the one after that.
I will take so much with me.
And bring back so much more.
Yes, I will bring it all back to them.
Show them my heart gone scarlet and buzzing with stories, philosophy, and fancy words.
I will sit at holidays and answer their questions for hours.
Because I am the trail blazer now.
I am the next conqueror.
I am new.
But then as I sit there,
I will walk back through the years,
Tracing back each act of grace, of progress, of
“just one more year!” and then “just one more month!”, and then, the final day.
I will peal back the layers
And find where I stepped off that ledge.
And I will look to see that the imprint of freedom is still on those steps.
To see that it was all worth it.
To see that what I have become is a sacred being to me.
I will have left behind what I know,
To go and be washed in new truths.
At least I will say that I did it.
That I marched forth with only wide eyes, tenderness, and a bit of strength,
All wrapped up in hope.
Hope that I would still be that pioneer.
That passionate soldier in this youth.
Still left standing mid-knock at new doors,
Even after all the others have been shut.