Hope prevails...

Sometimes life can sucker-punch you right in the face harder and rawer than death....

...hope prevails

Nesting in reverse

Just a few days ago I found a bird nesting in the most impossible of places: a little corner between the mosquito net and the glass of the faculty restroom.

It was the third of a three-part bird omen.

The very first one was the discovery of a dead pigeon right outside the glass wall of my classroom. I was able to see where it hit it and died.

I wonder how long after that sight my baby's heart stopped beating.

A couple of weeks after, another dead pigeon lied dead on the street just outside my house.

I shielded my daughter from the sight as I took her to school.

I didn't want to explain once more about beautiful creatures dying.

She didn't see it but I drove thinking of the dream that had flown away.

And then, that nesting bird came to me unexpected.

And it gave me hope.

I don't remember if I really did nest that other time, long forgotten, when things went well.

I nest in a different way, I make a cocoon of papers and books and baby clothes I can't bring myself to give away.

To my mother's dismay, I have never been good at cleaning and putting things away.

But tonight, that I no longer wait for the writer inside to flicker its hidden messages in Morse code on my skin, I have nested in reverse:

tonight I've thrown away pill bottles long ago expired, mutilated magazines awaiting Maya's left-handed scissors to cut away, hand-outs for students that will never read them, hopes and dreams of a me that no longer is.

Tonight little bird I nested for you in reverse.

But maybe, just maybe not too long from now, I'll make my cocoon of words and over-worked poems in the least expected of places.

And maybe

just maybe

you may come back.

I've bled your blood

Thank you for your tears and your blood. They've mixed on our bed, forever stained by our love gone wrong.

My body failed you. And it didn't even get to the point to show the palms of your hands the wonders it hid inside.

We aren't novices.

We know of bloody hospital sheets, the stench of surgical disinfectant and of residents and nurses that chat away ignoring drugged-up me on the table, just about to be cut open.

An anesthesiologist asked a nurse about her son while he waited for me to surrender to sedation and have our baby (or its remains) scrapped from my insides.

And I'm always a trouper, I'm always a patient that doesn't want to cause problems, I'm the one who doesn't cry and makes jokes just before I get broken.

I don't know what you do while I'm out. While all the king's horses and all the king's men unsuccessfully try to put me back together again.

The most beautiful declaration of your love was when you tried to break through the sunroof of your car with your fist.

I bled your blood and I painfully passed your life during that horrific night.

My love, in ten years I've held your life inside of me.

But I failed you this time.