To The One I Cannot Be With At This Time

To the One I Cannot be with at This Time.

No matter how I try, I cannot get to you. And believe me, I have tried.

I have sought every possible way of crossing closed borders without getting caught.

I have stood empty handed in every airport hoping for a flight that was never called.

I have calculated how long it would take me to walk to you (approximately 55 days and 7 hours) and imagined your face as I arrive on your doorstep. How it would light up with your smile that melts me every time. How you would pick me up in your arms. How you would never set me down again.

I have cried rivers hoping they would become oceans that would somehow close this land between us.

I have yelled and screamed and argued and bargained and still, I am found defeated and it kills me that I cannot be with you at this time but this, my darling, is how I will love you in the distance…

For the long distance lovers held apart by distance at this time, I wrote this for you, full article over at Elephant Journal, link below x

https://www.elephantjournal.com/2020/04/the-meaning-of-distance-in-times-of-isolation/

Day Thirteen and Fourteen #coronapoetry – Body and Season

Once again combining two prompts as I missed yesterday – everyone’s all like, hey I’ve got so much time on my hands, and I’m over here somehow busier than ever and finding it impossible to catch a few minutes to myself each day to get a poem done.

I’ve written this as a Tanka Poem, which is a Japanese form of poetry that translates as “short song.” There are 31 syllables in a Tanka, divided into five lines to make a 5 – 7 – 5 – 7 – 7 syllable structure.

Day Five #coronapoetry – My Country

My country is a woman / asked what she was wearing when they invaded her land / like maybe she’d had one drink too many / stayed one hour too long / wore her skirt one inch too high / like maybe she should have just said no / like maybe it wasn’t forced, but invited / like all women, silenced / trauma held in cracked earth / stories birthed / from a landscape of scars / rust-red mud-red blood-red ink / stained upon the heart of her ancestors / a past not forgotten / always carried / never healed.

Day Four #coronapoetry – Stuck

A short haiku poem today. I hadn’t intended for all my poems to be about covid-19 but this one is a reflection on my yesterday. Some days are tougher than others. We carry on.

Day Two #coronapoetry – Flow

Day Two

Ebb: To move away from the land
Flow: To move back towards it

The grapevine releases its leaves: this too shall pass.

Tell me of the ways grief will release from this body.
How it will collect wherever the leaves go in winter.

How the rains will come and wash this sorrow away
the same way floods came but not before the country

first burned. Dead wood piled upon dead wood.
Trauma upon trauma. Cleaning the wounds while

reopening the scars. Tell me of the ways a river
surrenders to the ebb and flow of the ocean.

How I too will learn to stop running and move back
towards this land that is mine.