relationships – Page 12 – One Woman's Quest

Hand Holding

Father’s grip
controlling crush
warned against
disobedience

First love
Grade one
holding hands
walking home

A sister’s hand –
frail flesh stretched
over aching bones –
clung to mine
until too hot to touch
I had to let go
while she surrendered
her last breath.

A lover’s hand
lacks stillness –
strokes and cajoles
sensuality evoking desire

Held my children’s hands
with my heart –
never wanting to let go
prideful possession

A granddaughter’s fist
still pink from birthing
wraps around my finger
gripping the unknown
with the ferocity of
one hungry for life

Husband’s hand
reaches for mine
conveys support –
strength to propel
me forward.

Hands convey
what the mind cannot –
a secret language
nuanced for life’s moments
leaving deep impressions.

(Hand Holding first appeared here August, 2018. I submit an edited edition here for Reena’s Exploration challenge: hands. Image from personal collection.)

Stalemate

Invisibility is undesirable
I am flesh craving
in a touchless world

A voice yearning
to be heard, a heart
to listen – compassion

growing cold. This side
of the table intolerable
how long will we continue

Till the rage in me ignites
sets your paper walls aflame
and will you even notice?

(For Reena’s Exploration Challenge: feature image is prompt.)

Just Saying

I wade through the muck
of your vocal excretions
anxious to mend the schism

What species of human
are you, would fabricate
such lies, impose such pain

And what species am I
that would tolerate it;
strive for reparation?

(Image my own)

To Old Friends

There is comfort
in old friendships,
reminders of things
forgotten, of misguided
adventures, and the folly
of youth; and there is hope
instilled by the passage of time
and the evidence that while life
changes, some things endure, and;
it is in the comfort of old friendships
that we find strength to believe in ourselves,
and the will to penetrate lingering angst, and
embrace the possibility of a future with purpose.

(To Old Friends first appeared here in December 2017. Image my own.)

Exorcism Required

It was desire
led me here
buried me alive

Lust borrowed
from loneliness
his heart a tomb

Flesh from flesh
can be extracted
psyche requires exorcism.

(Tuesdays, I borrow from Twitter @Vjknutson. Image my own.)

No Idea!

Girls are lucky: just need to find the right man –
looked after for life.
Advice from a teenaged brother.

Right! I yell back, fifty years later.
It was all a vacation –
raising the children on my own
looking for God in the midst of chaos
partners with wandering eyes
or absent…always absent…
still waiting for that “looking after”

And how did you make out, Brother Dear?
Oh, that’s right… married
… woman with a good job
willing to let you putter in the background

Guess we were both misled.

(Image my own.)

Players

Love as escapade
fails to gain respect
We crave commitment
have long term dreams
but negative encounters
shatter perspectives
so we take empty risks
settle for fleeting thrills.

(Image my own)

Summer Love

Waves lap in rhythm with my heart
midnight sky bewitches, stars sing,
hand-in-hand our spirits soar
pulses dancing to the seduction
of love’s enchantment –

Tonight the ambiance possesses us
tonight boundaries have no hold
we are moon-crazed innocence
warmed by mysterious stirrings
sand shifting beneath naked soles.

(For Eugi’s Causerie Weekly challenge: bewitched. Image my own.)

Gods and Demons

My fairy-tale-heart
dreamt of an Adonis
but his countenance
outshone my dull

Found instead
a Demogorgon
divide my time
between up and down

Like Persephone
I negotiate demonic
Hades darkness
enough for me.

(Tuesdays I borrow from Twitter @Vjknutson – this one edited. Image mine.)

Heart Math

One (me) plus one (you)
equals two (a couple)

So why is it that division
makes me feel less than whole

And subtraction (we minus you)
renders me an integer

And how, in this state of sub zero
do I solve for y?

(For Reena’s Exploration challenge: prompt here. Image my own.)