There is no way you should feel, there is only the way you feel.
(Akiroq Brost)
How easy it would be if life
could be explained in a word
or two, if should transferred
into reality the way words fit
on a page. In blocks. At least
my mother believed it. She
made sure I recited rules in
perfect cadence. Know the
answer without studying any
questions. Feelings had no
place outside a prayer book.
Strange. Now, I wish I could
reverse roles. Hold her hand
and tell her that I understand
why her care arrived broken.
Mom, years before you died,
I told you I loved you.
You didn’t know what to say.
But you heard my voice.
And I stepped outside the rigorous
lines set by
impossible perfection.
I look into the sky now
and find more colors
than blue, white, and black.
And I wish that I had found
rainbow memories inside you.
I know they are there. Even now.
There is no way you should feel, there is only the way you feel. (Akiroq Brost)
Good and bad,
bad and good,
right and wrong
the way of the church and the way of the doomed
fit into safe defined boxes when I went to school.
Black and white garbed nuns, rosary beads the size
of dried lima beads attached to their waists like holy chains,
explained life. All these symbols
spoke of heaven and hell,
with absolute certainty and no smiles.
My teacher sold eternity at fifty cents
a Gregorian chant book.
I lost at least three one year,
then found another book the same size and gray color,
and faked the intonations with soft whispers,
never turning my head and exposing the lie.
Me, this girl who couldn’t keep track of anything.
I did well enough when asked to reach for something in the clouds.
Yet tripped-over shadows on the ground,
a stranger on the practical path where everyone else lived.
The shy girl, the different girl,
who secretly played Mozart on old 78’s,
or hummed arias or show tunes
while the other kids screamed over Elvis.
I could never understand how hound dogs plus hips equaled ecstasy.
Already good and bad wouldn’t stay defined within the lines I’d learned.
One path for everything; who should decide?
One path for music or sexuality.
One path for heaven or hell or happiness.
I suspected that myopia led nowhere,
made the course narrow, constrictive, dull, unthinking.
It bound the spirit.
Even now, any unsolicited advice after, you should,
slips away from me, garbled, unheard.
No. Look into my eyes and see who I am.
I promise to do the same for you.
Perhaps together we can find
a new truth.
terrypetersen 