but here.

I had placed the flowers, bright, autumnal,
on the table by the bed
I wrote your name, and others,
and folded the paper,
tucked it under the white candle
and sat in the light
in prayer.

I lost my earring. my favorite.
a wolf, grey beaded and shimmering.
Steve said he saw it, fallen down a crevice, hidden from plain sight,
but there.
look,
he said.
I looked.
Look again, I said to myself.
I looked again
and found it,
fallen down a crevice, hidden from plain sight,
but there.
it was lost where I had slept, overcome with drowsiness
in the backseat of my car.

Then a woman shared a fever, a hallucination, a wild terror
and abandonment. My heart heard it
like a memory.
So we talked for a long time and the story of you tumbled from my throat,
still so sad and sore.
still so hurt and confused.
still a wild terror and abandonment.

All of this, before you arrived.
Or maybe it was the arrival, hidden from plain sight,
but there.

I was prone.
We were testing the landau reflex and I already knew I was weak.
Steve leaned down and whispered,
'there's a man here with you. he is here to help.'
I startled.
What nationality is he?, I asked.
'something like Armenian.'
and bombs exploded in my heart and my body ignited like a torch.
I was simmering in heat.
my dad, my dad, my dad.
I knew.
yes.
and she was there and he was there and they knew and they knew how to hold me, they knew how to open the gate and let the tide roll in.
I grieved.
I roared in longing and sadness and confusion and disbelief and infant desire for my father.
I reached out to him,
I shook with sorrow..
let me see you, let me see you, let me see you.
where are you?
but I knew, he was there
hidden from plain sight, but there.
I felt him.
someone new, old
loosened from his terrible pain,
freed from his tangled of mistakes and trespasses.
I knew
he was clear again.
here in love. with me. for me.
but why?
there wasn't the familiar fear, the suspicion, the readiness to survive.
my body was soft, my heart bled open, my little hands reached for him.
but why?
it was a question I stepped into, it confused my limbs and I stumbled, falling down.
why?
it seemed like a great effort to show up for..me. what was the point? I had always been the overlooked, the frightened one, the one that demanded something extra..something honest. I took effort. Plus,
he was dead.
it was over.
c'est la vie? right?
but here he was.
hidden from view, standing before me, here to help, patient, benevolent.
here he was.
for me.
it will take some time to integrate, I will wrestle with it, then put it down, then let it in.
but here he was, for me.
for the first time ever,
he showed up.

my heart broke and I wept for hours.
walked around dazed, soft and sorrowful and oh so full of something exquisitely beautiful.
everything changed
and I wonder if you are still here,
looking after me.
if you are now the ancestor that protects me, guides me, reminds me that
I am loved. I am loved. I am loved.

don't push your luck, kid.
I hear myself warn.

but for a moment,
for a moment,
you were here, hidden from plain sight,
but here.

I am just beginning.
we are just beginning this father and daughter dance.

in grandfather's arms.

I dreamed it the night after the fire with Tatewari. grandfather.

we were gathered at my home, ready to celebrate.
several chairs around a small table
and my father appeared.
I didn't see his face but I saw his arms, thin, brown.
I saw his frame
he was not there in body, but he was no ghost
he was there, I knew
as he is now.
whatever and wherever that is.
but he was there, approaching the table in a manner that was uncharacteristic of him
before.
tentative, respectful,
approaching with a hope for permission
a reluctance, not knowing if he would be welcomed.

I welcomed him.
he said, there may not be room.
I said,
we will make room for you. please
join us
please
sit
please.
you are welcome here.

it is tender to remember.

I remember half waking but planting my feet firmly in the dream.
I didn't want to leave him.

I thought,
"what would it be like to sit in his lap?
what would it be like to be infant sized and be cradled in his arms?
can I try?"

I tried, but couldn't find the way.
Truth be told, my body has no memory to draw upon.
I don't know what it would be like to be held by my father.
I couldn't even imagine it.
I had no idea of the shape or sense.

then, I thought,
how sad, how sad.
I miss him. I am so glad he is here and
how sad, how sad
that I couldn't know any of this in this life.

So I stretched my heart backwards and grieved for the fracture of love that led me here.
the painful truth that my father, never in his lifetime, knew love. not the bottomless, unconditional, hang the moon and swelling fullness of joy love.
as much as I tried, my fear was greater than love. my need to survive stronger than love.
I loved him in every way I could, but my sympathy was more steady.
Anyway, he swatted it down if ever it came too close.

So I stretched my heart backwards and imagined him held. imagined him loved by his father and mother; those guardians who once only frightened him. I imagined them held by their loving fathers and mothers and on and on and on and on, along the red thread. Imagine if love was the thing that persisted through my ancestors! Imagine if every baby was held and gazed upon and cooed at and cuddled and sung to, imagine if love wasn't an effort or obligation to ineptly live up to. Imagine being wanted, imagine belonging.....imagine celebration at the sight of you. I imagined this for everyone in my family through Iran and China and who knows where, who knows who.

and I woke up soft and weepy, sweetly grieving. so grateful for the presence, finally, of my father in my dreams. he never said goodbye before he left. well, if he did, it wasn't the right kind of goodbye. it was more like a curse. Yet, I survived it. at least so far.
And, i never said goodbye. Not to his face anyway. But in a deluge of poetry and prose, yes. I said goodbye a thousand times.
And now, I am swaddled in a sadness that is like a gentle rain. It's good that he has come. It's good that I can welcome him and forgive him and love him with my heart.
And maybe, someday, maybe he'll let me know that he can love me, that he's learned how. Maybe someday he'll tell me loves me.
For now, it is something so preciously and tenuously tender to know
that he is welcomed at my table
and that he has chosen to join me.

this

I am just not.
I don't know.
where were you? where are you?
I looked everywhere and I looked for a long time and
suddenly
I get this thought in my head,
this tangle of syllables on my tongue,
this melancholic urgency
to say
this.

and here you are.
in a sudden blink of light.

at the right time.

I don't feel up to anything.
I don't hear music or dance the way I used to.
I watch the world from the outside
and I help those on the outside to go back inside.
I watch old friends and am invited into their bones
while I sit alone and unattended at the edge of my own skin.

I don't feel up to anything.
I used to know how to make friends. I used to spring to a rhythm.
I don't anymore.
It's quieter. more subdued.
often resigned.

my heart splits to life with deer and dragonfly,
lightning bugs and a moon in the earliest morning hours
hushed by fog.
I'm happy in some ways, too.
Restarted in a clean space, a cared for and peaceful
nest.
a love that sees me and needs me.

but my past fires are muted.
the song, the dance, the act.

I just want to listen now to trees
and birdsong.
and feel the gentle magic of rain
and love surrounding me.

the rise and fall of me (and america)

I'm not proud of this. In fact, I am ashamed to say that I am one of the lights dimming in this world. I cannot rise to shine. My bloom is folding in.
I've grown weary of fighting.I'm tired of my own old stories, even though I've come to peace with  some of this history. I'm tired of looking for the good. How can I shine that brighter against the corrosive rust of humanity adrift. It used to be the struggle for my own life. my own light. my own liberty. I ate glass and walked fires to survive. I survived.
Like the ultimate stretch of strength for an animal, being boiled alive, to climb and clamor from the    hot pot, to win, to pause and take a near exhalation, only to be gingerly lifted up again and splashed into the center of the roiling.
I survived my childhood, for the most part. Some shrapnel and amputations are still in the process of reclamation. But, here I am...survivor of bending realities, cruelty and meanness, violation of spirit and soul...balanced between the thumb and fingers of a country gone rogue, a species gone rancid. And, just like that, I'm back in the boil. A sociopathic narcissist, contorting truth and speech, a bloated bag of skin, emptied and rotted from the inside, launching his shattered nothingness of a soul into violent projections and so, all the beautiful things must die. all the light in the world must hide under the shrouds. to accommodate defense, the darkest rages find their footing and tooth and claw begin their wrestling to the bottom of the pond. and, if the sun rises, it has been snuffed in public celebration.
what is more significant of hope than an animal, a child, a right to life with dignity and love, a peaceable sharing world where everyone has enough, when no light is stormed out by another, when there is sky big enough for all the stars?
and now they are in cages, crying forever  because the soul shatters in all that blind terror. I know. and now they are extinct, stuffed behind the veil because that kind of wilderness and wisdom must not remind people of their own possibilities. I know.
and now they are leaned on crutches, sucking on dry crackers because if they are at the far edge of their basic needs, they will not speak, will not rise, will not rally. they will comply and go quietly into that dark night. and now they are othered, because this whole nation of people are balanced on the head of pin and told to look out and to destroy the enemy. and now the colors run, the singing grows hoarse and the ink dries. the dancing feet pull together in their shackles.
I say that my light is fading. I say it and as I speak I feel the fire. It's still there, hot and smoldering. I'm still alive and more than an ember.
I don't know what it will take to journey through this next moment. I can be so easily overcome. I have been so well adapted to hopelessness. To submit and seek smallness and to make a shelter of my own hands surrounding the flicker of flame...that was my roadmap. These were my tools: Dance in the periphery. Sing and laugh when I can find it. Seek solitude and lay in the grass with animals. Talk to the moon. Rage and empty the buckets of tears into the warm waters of the sea. Keep the pen moving; make sure there is proof that it happened, that I happened. I was here. This is real. I exist. Seek the kindness of strangers but keep them strangers so they don't have time to know my bullseye. Tolerate the loneliness. It is better than the terror.  But, the terror is soothed by company so it circles me back to the humans and becomes the dilemma and diamonds of relief.
I am still here. This is real.