An excerpt from still.
– Poetry by Corey Ruzicano –
on family tree—
and every day my mother,
who is every day a mother,
looks down defeated by her hands
the hands that are her mother’s hands
the gnarled strega nonna branches
of the woman who poisoned so many years of her life.
my mother fell
an apple from a rotting tree
a miracle seed that grew into something
sweet and strong, in spite of everything.
my mother’s hands build houses
paint pictures more beautiful than their subjects
braise beets and garlic and jerusalem artichokes
make food of our roots
bake perfect fairy castle confections
each thing more full of wonder than the last
turn old dresser drawers into nest boxes for chickens, doll
houses into bunny homes
hang antique chandeliers in the high ceilinged duck house
she digs dirt
she bales hay
she feeds
she carries
she cares
i look down at my hands
long fingered ivory keys
my one vanity
and wonder if they will,
with time
become knotted branches, too.
what words there weren’t
1.
every word
every whisper
a world I had not chosen
and it frightened me
it heavied me like lead
the spinning
spokes
of a beached bicycle
a whirring reminder
of how soon things are lost
2.
this is what i have of yours
of you
everything i can remember
it’s funny now
what it adds up to
the paper doll you
instead of the you that breathes and laughs and drools on the pillow
what i do and do not know
this is what i have
this is what i give them
warm wood underfoot
an old sad song
roofs and rain falling on them
lightning bugs
the smell of the air in your home town
magic pieces of the world that
no matter how many times they’re named
can never
need never
fully be explained
3.
i realize
as i try to describe my mother
that i would never have enough words for it
that every writer
since the first
had been trying to put into something that would stand
how it feels to love someone so much
there will never be enough words for it
that this life
so infinitely filled with two sided coins
would never have enough stories or pictures or music enough to make someone understand how
terribly, how entirely, how much bigger and truer and more real than any binding law or physical
compound, i loved my mother.
and the tears of that love,
the salt of all of it would dry
unseen on this paper and the only sliver of silver in all this is the thought that someday someone
might read this and know that they too love their mother in some implacable way
different and the same
no more or less true than the way i love mine.
still
the word hung in the air like a comma
like a crack in the door
a chink in armor
still
there was a line on the ceiling
i told time by the shadows moving across it
it rained inside that year
still
i was
i couldn’t help
i didn’t fight
the spell
whether he knew he had cast it or not
still
it is 2 am and all i can do is ache.
it is 2 am and i am scratching away at nonsense
trying to do anything but say the words i know i don’t mean but
would feel so good to say
would feel so good to pretend just for now
would feel so good just to let them fling themselves
up from lungs
and out through my teeth the way they are begging to do
to be
both true
and not
still
it is still 2 am
time spread
it was viscous
or maybe i was
time spread between each second
pooled out
the clock stretched
dalì like
like the air had expanded between the minutes
and me
still
something i am still trying to be
perhaps no matter what decade you live in
this is always what it’s like to be twenty something
or perhaps just alive
still
all that possibility
still
all these questions
still
all that promise
still
i am not
and never have been
still
and
still
here
i
am
About the Author – Corey Ruzicano
Corey Ruzicano is a writer-educator from the San Francisco bay area trying to make sense of this world through words. Her writing can be found at howlround, stage & candor, the lark blog, the tiny seed, and wingless dreamer.
Did you like these poems by Corey Ruzicano? Then you might also like:
Sanctuary, and other poems
kindled
The Body as Poem
Metaplasia and other poems
This is What Death Does
Things I’ve Learned on the Road
Dog Men (A Prison Story)
We grew up on fear and became heroes
Mud Season, Graceless & Violet Abandon
The damsel in distress was not for me
In the Blink of an Eye, Risk Taking, Afterfall
In Time I’ll Thank Shamon
The Space I Take
The Worst Drunk Poem I’ve Ever Written
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