by Lynne Friedman
i disappear a little each day without your touch
i am here. what is there to say? the moon has disappeared again.
red spheres and lace snowflakes. deep sighs aching to shake forth.
the deer whisper into the field across the road. i am sleepless as water.
once, we leaned into each other like juniper branches in winter winds.
i am here. the wind tears at the house. january morninglight fierce
against the bare stalks of trees. a diamond spear sizzles in the colorado
bright. whoever said january cannot hold fire? the sun alone is proof.
you and i carry trauma in our hearts like a butterfly. there is no hurry.
i am here. what if you were moving through me like a flutter of owl wing
sleeping? what if i have forgotten how to feel? the heavy slanted light.
i shade my eyes against it. coyotes wake beneath mountain swell. how we
tense our bodies, hold them so hard. i didn’t say goodnight to you last night.
i am here. the creekbed has forgotten the touch of water. the bears
are sleeping with soft and hungry eyes. wind, the breath of sky. so much
to lose. the train cries from far away, shattering me into the shape of salt.
i want to matter to you again. dry leaves rustle like a tinkling stream.
tree limbs speaking their silent woven language. just be like the sky.
i am here. the clementine peel sits in its beautiful shards. the sour cherries
before they are made into pies, before even the birds find them.
everything else seems muted in the whitish light. how long since you sang
down from the mountains? once, i was strong and able to carry us
anywhere through the night. your voice true and breaking.
i am here. how to be all that you want again. the slow shift of canyon.
a metronome of earth shattering sound. how could the sky have been
so empty a moment ago? once, you colored in everything in-between.
the rosy rocks beneath remember. but i am still the cloud, you know.
still the wind. i touch nothing and hold onto no one.
Jill Kitchen’s work appears or is forthcoming in Naugatuck River Review, Poems in the Afterglow, and Tinderbox Poetry Journal. She has a B.A. in Romance languages from Colorado College and has studied creative writing at UCLA, Columbia University, The Poetry Project in New York City, and with Hollowdeck Press in Boulder. She lives in Boulder, Colorado where she can be found rollerskating on the creek path while searching for great horned owls. Twitter: @jillkitchen.
Lynne Friedman’s work has been shown in solo exhibitions at the Booth Western Art Museum (GA), Galleria Nacional (Costa Rica), the James McNeil Whistler Museum and numerous solo shows in New York City including Noho Gallery and Prince Street Gallery among others in the Chelsea District of NYC. Additionally her work was selected for the U.S. Department of State Art-in-Embassies Program for Djibouti, E. Africa and Colombo, Sri Lanka. Her work is in many corporate and private collections including Pfizer, McGraw Hill, IBM, Columbia Presbyterian Hospital, Pace University, Ritz Carleton Hotels and City National Bank. She has received seven artist residency grants to work in Spain, Costa Rica, Ireland, Southern France and New Mexico. She received a BA and MFA in Art from Queens College, an Ed.D. from Columbia University and studied at the New York Studio School. Previously a college art teacher she now works full time painting.