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Indigo Vales

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Indigo Vales

Tag Archives: love

dreamsong

30 Friday Oct 2020

Posted by Kristine in Uncategorized

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dream, love, Mom, moment, poem, song, womanly things

Standing at the kitchen sink
in a tiny log cabin
cold orange light slanting in
Washing washing washing
Bruce Springsteen behind
watching me
wash with a rag in the big white sink
singing an old bride’s song

It’s a song about rain on one side of the day
blue skies in the morning and waking cold
middle of the night
unsure if I did all the washing
The blankets you made are heavy and tell me
everything’s all right.

I’ve got rain on my mind
fog in my eye
Lavender in every breath that happens
Mom said she loves me
I already know
because it’s about to rain on the other side of the sky.

A Letter To Jivey

16 Wednesday Sep 2020

Posted by Kristine in Uncategorized

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beach, change, daughter, food, grief, horseshoe crab, Journey, letter, life, love, molt, nosh, rise, son, vacation

Dear Jivey,

It’s been three days since you returned to the Hudson river valley.  I’ve been moping since, but today I find the courage to write aloud. 

I love you and miss you both.  You brought me blessings and laughter and happiness and treasure I won’t forget and thank you.

This morning the cicadae are shirring in the pine trees. (Remember the little guy shuffling off his former coil by my front door?)   The temperature is cool and the humidity is gone: you seem to have taken it away with you. I wanted bathtubfulls of rain to fall sideways or maybe a thunderstorm to impress you while you were here, but all we got was drips, sweat, and static electricity high in the clouds. Tomorrow night the rain will come, courtesy of a hurricane remnant. I feel like I owe you wild weather, Ms. Vine, that we could stand outside and ride and shout out the wonderful chaos. And also Krispy Kremes.

I made a grocery store run this morning and everything I wanted was not there: bagels, rye bread, white queso sauce for a nacho treat. There are little teardrops of grease on my turquoise tablecloth, remnants of the New York pizza you brought, and everything feels out of joint. I fall into the writer’s recollection of how food joins us, humans, in happiness and grief. 

Monday I expected Ms. Vine to come in to the room where I write and felt sad when I remembered.  Last night I felt parts of you still in my room. It was a long night with little sleep. 

Horseshoe crabs come to the beach to molt their exoskeletons so they can grow into their new lives as their ancestors have done for a million years.  We collect their skins and wonder at these ancient arthropods, some intact, some in pieces, but we rarely see them as they continue their journey in the waters. You brought one molt in and prepared it with everything that I love about you. I’m glad the Universe put it in your path. Jivey, may your journeys be as successful, contingent on rising with the tide.

Love always,
Mom. 

Birthday, Mom.

12 Friday Jun 2020

Posted by Kristine in Uncategorized

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Birthday, Camaro, love, Mom, mother, New Jersey, NJTP, parents, questions, road trip

Whose dumb idea was it to get in the car and drive to Jersey, huh?
Probably yours, glad I came along for the ride, though.
Good thing I did because if I hadn’t you’d still be standing there on the
turnpike weeping.
(As I have done several times.)

That was in the days when I loved you and wanted to be your rock
and your friend, a companion of sorts. Our road trip to Jersey
sheltered in the deep sheepskin seat covers of an ’81
Berlinetta Camaro, beautiful bronze, you remember?

We limped past road signs with names and numbers
we sat on the side of the road and counted the pieces of
amber glass, green glass, white glass, and loose cement
while we waited for the car to cool down.

I made it my job to make you laugh, you remember?
What the fuck is a Cheesequake and why is it a state park?!
Matawan. If that’s not a Native American word nothing is,
“bad riverbank” indeed, the name of our trip.

Well Chummer, we’re not standing on the side of the road anymore
wondering what to do next, phoneless, clueless, helpless.
I have Google, now, to solve all my problems, haven’t I?

A Post From A Most Imperfect Mom

20 Wednesday May 2020

Posted by Kristine in Uncategorized

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children, connection, hope, love, parenting, parents, patience, quarantine, soon, stress

I awoke thinking about connections. That we were once connected. My body has proof, it says we were. I remember your flutter when I sipped vanilla shake from McDonald’s, I could feel the cold going down and sure enough, there was the movement, like you could feel the freezy vanilla, too. Your angles alive in my bowframe, pushing or kicking like a boxer on the speed bag. Today we are connected by the green phone in a speech bubble app. Technology brings the distant close? Is that our miracle? Sometimes it is because when you sent me that hug I could really feel it from here.

We are in strange times right now because of a contagion, one we’re racing to understand, mitigate, and hopefully vaccinate off the planet. We are in quarantine or semi-quarantine, struggling to cope with who and what is essential. No paychecks. Trapped in our homes with wild children or good children turned wild and spouses we thought we recognized but never knew. Many people are turning to their creative side, making, mending, sorting, doing the best with what is at hand and making it better, bringing their children into the activities. Many are bend-breaking in the stress because they feel trapped. Some are sharing cruel words about their kids on social media which brings me here this morning:

I used to laugh at the commercials of parents singing and dancing while going back-to-school shopping as their children dragged themselves miserably in the wake of their parents glee down the aisles. Ha ha, that’s cute. Or teachers who post “here you go, parents, take your kids back, they’re all yours” in June. And now we feel “trapped” with children we chose to bring into the world? How did we lose our connection to our children and families and neighbors and each other? Oh I know how we lost it, the question is rhetorical.

I ask you today, what *will* we do to get our healthy connections back?

Grief & Bliss

09 Saturday May 2020

Posted by Kristine in Uncategorized

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Tags

2Cellos, bliss, desire, grief, longing, love

We are portals
flesh and spirit
We beckon and are beckoned

She puts on another layer of black eyeliner
ducks her head when he smiles
his catchers-mitt hand reaches out
disbelieving she is wanted
in walks fear and desire.



AWOL

23 Sunday Feb 2020

Posted by Kristine in Uncategorized

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Tags

cellphone, dad, forgiveness, help, lost, love, missyou, simplicity, technology

I stalk
like an old lady
black t-shirt sweatpants thing
but you don’t notice me
sitting in the marble lobby waiting
echoing
I bring you my offering
Pieces parts
Hope in a bag
Crumpled
The kind that chokes turtles and whales
that somehow carries a can you help me
I am strong
with purpose
Solve my problem
Like an astronaut drifting without hope
rescue me, we planned for this
didn’t we?
His last words to me
I locked them in
I love you more
eidetic sunset, sunrise
Your need. mine.
I’m here always, but you are gone
I don’t want to lose the last of you
the best of you
this is my Graumans’ you
I carry on in a crinkly brown bag
like elder ladies do
hand to pigeon
I love you
I miss you
And that’s okay.

— Kenny’s kid

Life vs Laptop

18 Monday Feb 2019

Posted by Kristine in Uncategorized

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commonplace, human, laptop, life, love, social media, society

She smiled at me from her shopping cart, her perfect baby chiclet teeth all white in a row. I waggled my fingers at her and we went on our separate ways. I hoped her Mom didn’t mind a stranger trying to be kind.
He pulled back his cart and said, “Excuse me,” though he seemed 100 feet away. We smiled and nodded and went our separate ways.
The maintenance guy held up my brother’s bicycle as he was learning to go without training wheels.
A neighbor plowed our driveway when he knew my spouse was wounded and unable to do so, then my son, years later helped plow out neighbor’s houses when they had no way to get free.
There are thousands or more moments like this that prove that we are kind. That we are love. That we are worth saving and fighting for. We, being humankind. Mostly all we hear about is abuse and conspiracy and things we cannot change, and I believe we are impaling ourselves on the negative instead of seeing the beautiful children, men, and women who smile and share and give, the unnamed, unheralded. I look forward to the day that we no longer report how nice Miss Denise was because it had become so commonplace.
Put down the phone. Put down the electronic. Walk outside and make eye contact with the world… the world! The world breathes and exhales and makes and changes and creates. The world that is not parliament or congress. Walk away from the screen and embrace the living skin of the real world. Inhale the life. Accept being inhaled. Give without thought. Walk away from QWERTY. The best of us is there… right there and it will never be reported every day but you will see it and stock it on your shelves.


Thoughts of Laquan

06 Saturday Oct 2018

Posted by Kristine in Uncategorized

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16, bullet, change, child, holes, justice, Laquan McDonald, love, mother, murder, pain, sixteen

One

  Two

Three

Four   Five  Six

                      Seven

Eight

Nine
Ten.    Ten.   Ten.

   Eleven

                      Twelve

             Thirteen 

                Fourteen                                         Fifteen 

Sixteen. 

 

I’ll bet you’ve had sixteen kisses planted on your face when you were in the middle of something by a little kid who loves you, rapid pace, out of the blue, the moment when your child’s cup overflows and they must kiss and love the joy is so much and you might have been annoyed for breaking into your busyness, but sixteen pecks on your face. Pixels cannot hold that moment but a heart can.

The number means something different to me today. It means less because I am not his mother, I am not from his community. I don’t know what she knows. But still, I think about him today, and yesterday.

I don’t know what 16 bullet holes looks like in my son’s flesh, or even my own.  I could draw little dots on my body to see how it looks but that’s dots and this is flesh that will write junk today and junk tomorrow. I just need someone to know that I won’t forget. That her son matters. Justice matters. And I don’t want to play this numbers game anymore.

Patience For The Queen

17 Thursday May 2018

Posted by Kristine in Uncategorized

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change, death, fail, family, life, love, patience, Saffron Queen, strength, Universe

The Saffron Queen is a dream of blood now. She is garnet and green veins, though she wishes they were blue, strong and heroic like Princess Diana. She is needles and nose mucous, pretty in that blouse she bought for her trip to Puerto Rico, pink lace, denim and sandals she waits for the drip to be done so she can vape her troubles away.

The Garnet Queen’s hands are talons now, gripping, grasping, seeking prey to tear apart on the rocks of her teeth. This lady is no raptor seeking meat, she wants to kill the heart of you with her cruel, crushing words. And now she curls up like a baby and weeps, begging for love, sipping from her “Kwanzaa” cup, lost in a place she did not ask to be. She drifts off and the fear and the hate and the sorrow melt away.

She is Changeling, someone replaced her in the night with someone else, there is no other explanation for why she has gone. She is lost and believes she is alone, no one cares, even though her man strokes her hair and I press dressings to stop the bleed where she pulled out the IV.  She is Changeling, wondering why her children haven’t come, hating them and laying curses on them forever.

A cold front moves in over the ocean, rising thunderheads captured in steel gray and mango moments before the rain, a dramatic photograph she took that sits on the floor of her room instead of hanging proudly on someone’s wall. I like to remember my fierce potted plant friend as photographer lady, the unfinished woman wondering why her children never call, her man working so hard to please her. May her Kwanzaa cup brim with love tomorrow, may the grace of the Universe find her man and fill him with patience and strength, and I’ll not fail to remember the dachshund pillows next time.

The Queen Wears Saffron

04 Wednesday Apr 2018

Posted by Kristine in Uncategorized

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Tags

ask, death, dogsong, friend, healing, help, listen, love, peace, Saffron

“They left me. The dogs. The afternoon!”  I cobbled together what she meant. I heard the panic in her voice, but that didn’t stop me from brushing my teeth and buying her a Slushie before I pulled into her empty driveway.

I entered the house, de-pursed and -jacketed myself onto her sofa. I took note of the state of her home. It wasn’t until I reached the second stairway that the dogs decided to make a fuss, but the herd did not murder me as she always fears. The dachshunds are a noisy lot but they know I’m not afraid of their “yeah just you try it” eyes and ivory teeth. They flop over and let me love them like the pussies they are.

She needed someone to take the dogs outside for their afternoon walks because everyone left her. I did my best in shifts and had some success as they relieved their bowels and barked at the breeze inside a plastic white fence. She asked me to stay and of course I did, willing to stay until midnight.

I brought the queen a blue Slurpie because I know it’s what she likes. I walked her dogs because it’s what she needed.  I listened to the queen whose house has been on fire since I’ve known her, Judge Judy playing in the background.

The queen sipped and nipped at food which I found encouraging, her dogs circling her wagon, allowing me on her bed. I complimented the lady on her bedroom curtains not because I felt I had to but because it was sincere.  It seemed to make her happy. I understand now why she says her bedroom is cold: the north wall is one big window that faces the Chesapeake Bay, and it’s hard to keep out the north/northeast wind from your eyelashes this way. The view is beautiful, if only one is okay sleeping under a pile of covers.

The queen was strong enough to ask for help in getting her dogs outside to relieve themselves, yet she wouldn’t allow anyone to delve into why her body is wasting away. I find it hard to ask and receive help, and her cold fingers remind me that I am a fool. She apologized for the current state of her home where she served everyone homemade meals and tried to save everyone from themselves because it was her job. I held her cold hand and noted the “watch it, punk” look in Izzy’s eyes: I told them both, “No worries.”  I left them resting in a nest of clean saffron sheets and a gray throw.

We all let each other down when we do not talk, when we do not speak the real. When we do not truly listen to each other.  My prayer for today is wrapped in saffron and dandelion, tiny pollens stuck to my fingers and nose, that we stop and we listen, and we grant ourselves peace.

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