Seeing blurred writing

on an abstract painting

brings me right back

to begging you to teach me

to read before I went to school

after I figured out that

all of you knew the

hidden messages in the

mushy pictures because

I saw you share them in your

secret talks, keeping me out

for my own good, you said,

so I could learn the right way

you said

turning me away

into an outsider already

wearing my safari hat

trying to see the world

through a one-eyed

spyglass of my own making

When we drove past the trail

we walked when we were newly

married, I remembered the day

I so thoughtlessly asked you

to carry a heavy sawed off

tree trunk home from our hike

so I could turn it into a sculpture

and you did

so I could

but now I feel the weight of it

and I understand if

it is one of the resentments

you haul and store dark

in your labyrinth room

of sorrows, where you walk

alone lost among closed walls

but we have come so far

and I want to be sure you know

there is a door now that

connects our mazes

to a room where we can sit

hold hands, look at the murals

we have each created

to see our trust blooming

on the sunny side of all the

boundaries we have planted

The day my daughter cried louder

harder than any time ever before

I turned into a ventriloquist able

to pray with desperation silently

as my lips were moving saying

useless words that fell down lost

more and more until she stopped

abruptly stared at me dumbstruck

she told me that I glowed

she calmed

we never understood

what happened, just a fluke,

a stroke of luck, a mystery

of lighting and direction

until a student in despair, crying

screaming out her secret of abuse

went on and on, a million tears

called out my desperation

once again I prayed

behind my empty words

more and more until she stopped

abruptly stared at me dumbstruck

she told me that I glowed

she calmed

leaving me completely wonderstruck

without a voice to call my own