Here I am

Here I am, waiting for my father's text again

words like hands who don't know they hold me.

Here I am, stomach grumbling because someone said that

intermittent fasting was good for me. I nodded at the sink, obediently,

knowing that pumpkin pancakes with pecans

and Naan with ghee were so much better

Here I am, trying to let life live through me like a poet told me to.

But only when I stop trying, does life seep in,

sneak through the door of stillness.

And lately, I've been trying so hard.

Here I am, knotting my eyebrows over my notebook and keyboard,

my whole body trying to write it, line it, before it is too late.

The vividness of a feeling slips away sometimes as fast as those river otters

in Point Reyes, that I still can't believe we saw (and which I've told no one about),

inside all the kissing we were doing:, our jeans rolled up, bodies pressed down to the sand.

The landscape we made.

Here I am, my lifelong passion for animals, eclipsed by this animal passion for

someone new.

Look how my fervent, almost obsessive need to take note; to tell my mother or my journal every little miracle I've witnessed

Look at it being taken, tumbled and washed smooth like a wave takes a child's sand castle

back to sea.

Here I am, a Sunday morning after a rain, remembering

that sometimes it is better to put down the pen, relax the forehead, and let go

to let the body be the page, the word you're looking for.

Here I am, praying that one day I won’t need this at all (though I may still want it);

praying that, by next year, my presence will feel like a poem, and that breathing next to you, if you're still here by then,

will feel like a poet reading aloud her best work.