GROUP

I am thankful to go to GROUP tonight. This is what Mike chooses to call our poetry writing group. It's Mike-Petra-Me action. We meet at Petra's cute little Stanford house Thursday nights and share our poetry, workshop, read aloud and be writers. It is a great great great feeling for me.

This is my poem I am sharing tonight. It is about the process of "getting over" someone. I wrote it about a month ago.

This is it's first draft.

When Love Leaves

When love leaves, I unravel what we’ve made,

dutifully as a widow performs last rights

for her husband, love or no love.

You don’t exist anymore,

I whisper to the half-knit

soft and flawed object.

How we loved you,

squeezed you in our palms as we fell into slumber,

pressed you to our cheeks and murmured over your softness.

I pull the needle out, and unravel stitch by stitch.

When love leaves,

I bring out the bag of brown rice.

I can’t stomach the lover’s food we’d eat:

olives, rich cheese, anchovies.

I buy root vegetables, leafy greens

and stir myself up some monk food.

I want to purge away this feeling.

When love leaves,

I wake up in the morning,

and tell myself:

I am beautiful,

this is a beautiful day,

get up

get up

get up.

When love leaves,

I don’t wear mascara, and I carry klennex in my pocket.

For the first time I feel jealous of his ex.

If he loved her, why not me?

I go to Vipassana meditation, and tears roll down my cheeks.

I let the dog sleep under the covers with me again.

I watch chick flicks I’ve already seen.

I haven’t taken any of the blue pills since he drove away.

After two days, I’m bleeding.

Goodbye, goodbye, my body sheds.

When love leaves,

I can’t stop eating.

I buy a bag of atomic fire balls

so i’ll have something to crack my teeth with.

I eat an entire bag of oversized red-delicious apples at the kitchen counter.

I re-write my list of life plans.

When love leaves,

On-how-it-went-wrong feels like a knotted mess of yarn.

Did we make this mess, or was it always like this?

I spend a week trying to unknot it,

this string goes under this one,

and this one was all twisted.

I feel frustrated and cry.

I rummage around for my scissors

and with a brave deep breath,

take the sharp sheers to this tangled mess.