Meaning

Poetry. Unpacking my relationship to meaning.

It doesn’t mean until it ends.

1)

At the base of meaning is always intention

Did you mean it when you pulled me through the river into you

Did you mean the thing you said, the ugly name that cut my dry skin open

Did you mean the plan you made

Did you mean it when you tripped me and left me in your forest

Did you mean the nights I spent wondering

Did you mean, mean, mean…

2)

Meaning is a layer of repetition

A cold and calculated always

A buffer between this time and the next

A form you take to stay powerful, a vampire

A birthmark, almost, with how often you bore it, with the way it stained your fists

A conjugation of the same you, with me rearranged and truncated

A ritual, daily, in between my blinking eyes

A defense of nature louder than Darwin could scream it.

3)

Meaning is the time to make the black fruit ripe

The endless lists of apologies

The distance that drifted between me and the next man

The pungent smell of you becoming perfume in the parlor

The promise of the better

The promise of the better

The primrose prick when there’s no batter to bake with

The thing from outside the forest: a birthday necklace I wear to chain down the memory of you

4)

The meaning of you is a hollow shell I fill with forgiveness

Prayers so righteous that the lord must be in you

Practice, plans, palaces of half-truths built to delude me

Primrose, again, a bouquet you shoved in my hands, my fingers bleeding

Patience and passion, hunched confusion over the bathroom sink

Perhaps there’s a bun in the oven

Perhaps I am just knocked up

Pouring wine I can’t drink anymore, the dough baking, always baking, hopefully never finished.

5)

It doesn’t mean until it ends

I haven’t survived the wolves unless I wake up in the hospital

I tell a different story with fangs over my shoulder

I can’t fall in your forest again, this great abyss again, becoming home amidst your mists again when

I give birth to the blinding light

I hold space for the healing heart

I make room in the oven

I break bread with the mad king twice

I surrender my map of the forest to my children

I am not alone in the fading green of you

I watch your branches grow and this time they’re easier to trim, to snap off under sharp metal

I can pluck this cold and calculated always from the undergrowth, drown it in the riverbed,

I will let the water soak my skin like communion as we wade across without you

I can hand the primrose back, scabs and all.

6)

My meaning is a ritual. I mean it daily, in between my blinking eyes.

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