come on down to the Mermaid Cafe

                  keel hauling my heart




don’t you know i loved you
	i gave you my heart the day you said you gave me yours
	you know i loved you
		but you seem not to have cared

and like a mutineer on a pirate ship of old
	you punish me
		your rightful law
	you punish me
		tie me up and throw me down
			into the water
	pull pull pull 
		under the ship i go
	salt in my wounds
		i try not to scream
		 try not to breathe
	back and body bashed against the boat
	as they pull me all to slowly
		under under 
				down i go


this is my rightful punishment 
	my heart tied to yours 
			forever
	our hearts 
		combined in love and hatred
 	our hearts
		combined

don’t you know
		i loved you

                      believe


my son’s school has a volunteer program for parents
the morning after election 2016
i had to walk into his class as a “trusted adult”
	and tell these six year olds that they will be ok


oh god, i didn’t want to walk into that room


at line-up the parents’ eyes were all red rimmed from crying
			from fear
			from not knowing what is next


we were afraid to read about anti-bullying 
	   scared because we don’t know what to say 
			how to explain these results to our children


but we did it
	five of us read the preselected book about being blue
		and helped the children draw frowns and smiles on paper plates
			masks to show their faces
		i told them that cat videos make me smile
	
we told these children that we will protect them
			that we are here for them
			that we love them


	i hugged these children
		my child and his classmates


i am sad for my country
	grieving common sense
	mourning what was and what could have been


but soon
	i need to stand up
	we need to rise
			   in kindness and love
	i need to believe 
				for my son
				for your daughters
				for our transgendered children that are already dying
				for my immigrant husband
				for our parents on social security
				for our friends that are disabled
				for women  


we need to believe
	and we need to fight
				for our freedoms and for our rights


this is who i am
	and i refuse to be less
	         refuse to accept going backwards


i fight with my words
          			and with my hugs
	i believe in the future
				that we have one
				and i am helping to form it
			
	i have a son
there are versions of the future that terrify me


		i      am      terrified


	but i have to believe in possibility 
			          in love
			          in me and you


	teach with me
				believe with me

There are a million different types of mistakes to be made. Mistakes of a dire nature, crimes of passion or planned thought, unprotected sex, words spoken that should have been kept in, or trying to be popular because someone said you should. Don’t forget maxing out the credit card as soon as you get it, or taking out a payday loan that you know is bad business, but it seemed better than defaulting on your car loan, that ended up repossessed anyway. Opening that second bottle of wine when, really, one is more than enough.

Don’t forget mistakes in love...but are they mistakes? Are loves loved and lost mistakes, road bumps, or just what it takes to make the real one, the right one, take?

---

Tanya was the air I breathed, the blood in my veins, the … well you get the idea, she was all the clichés. From our first tipsy admission of attraction and sneaking that first kiss in a dingy college bar bathroom to morning’s afterglow.

We did it all the right way. Falling like a love poem into the ocean, or some other overdone mixed-metaphor that doesn’t quite work. We did it all wrong. Over time we loved. We lusted. We cheated. We cried. We talked. We did it all. Not necessarily in that order, and in only the way people finding newness at twenty-one can manage. All those hormones and freedom. Graduation right around the corner. The big scary adult world ahead of us. It was a love unique in my life, a love unique in the world, it was a love doomed and poorly timed.

In the end she was all wrong for me in the most vital of ways, she was still so very closeted, refusing to hold hands in Greenwich Village, blocks from Stonewall, in 1996. A time and place where our safety was fairly certain. Nevermind telling her family. She was the golden girl and refused to break their stereotypes of her.

She called me when I moved across the state; We tried to make it last, make it a future. She called with a man in her bed, lonely and missing me. She called me out on things I said and words I didn’t. She wanted forever but refused to admit to me now. She threw my weaknesses back at me one night as dark gave in to the never ending battle with daylight. She hurt me with my own words. She’s a therapist, she knew what she was doing. She knew the power of manipulation. She knew the power of words over sticks and stones.

I moved without a forwarding address.