I’ve stopped trying to write what I don’t know

I’ve stopped trying to write what I don’t know 

By Olivia Gwyn

Instead—

the scattering of the leaves, the underside of the branches, the soft mud underfoot and the gentle unforeseen passing of days 

The weeping of the willows in my best friend’s backyard in June, her parents insisting we wear helmets, me, proud and foolish, determined to ride with

The wind in my hair, the world flying by my eyes, my heart too slow, too young to imagine what they feared, what they knew

How much there still was to lose

and how full my hands are,

how easily something could fall 

The real thing

The real thing

By Olivia Gwyn

I am trying to make a life, 

but I have to make dinner

and get my baby to sleep, 

but she won't go to sleep

So I strap her on me and boil pasta

and rock her and sing and

start to wonder what's wrong with her

– I mean, me

Until I finally get her down

and take a deep breath

and remind myself

this is the whole point

Until she wakes up 

and interrupts

my poem about her

and I forget

What a gift –

the real thing

These are the days

These are the days

By Olivia Gwyn

I catch my breath 

as the air pours through the windows

 

And it hits me out of nowhere

how many more times in my life will I get this view on a night like this

 

When the fields smell of fresh grass and damp earth and old hay

and the crickets are singing

to the darkness or the moon or each other

 

How many more drives home 

when home is a simple word 

 

It hits me like a bag of cement to the gut–

you’re going to miss this

 

Everything is changing

and it happens so fast

and we wish it away

for the next the better the best

 

But it never comes 

because there is only today 

and today is all we get

 

Only tonight–

the thin clouds

the lone star

the invisible brightness

headlights on the road

one hour down

on the way home

on the threshold of summer

 

Because all of a sudden two years from now is a week from Tuesday 

and nothing's ever going to be the same

 

So let me breathe in the air

and let tonight be tonight

Let me drive the roads of monotony

and let it settle in my bones

Let me feel it while it’s here

let me ache let me cry let me bang my head against the steering wheel turn the music up run my hands through my hair and be still 

 

Let me know that I am alive

and these are the days

These are my days

God–don’t let them slip away

I love my cold ears on your collarbone

 

I love my cold ears on your collarbone 

By Olivia Gwyn

After I have been sitting 

on the porch where

the sun hasn’t reached 

We have been snap-ish 

with each other all morning 

and there is no good reason 

There is forgiveness,

thank goodness,

even for the smallest things

So when you laugh

I take hold of it

with both hands 

The sun touches my toes

and the coffee grows cold 

and a long morning is just

Another chance to make you laugh

and for you to kiss me on my neck

for as long as we both shall live 

In the meantime

 

In the meantime

By Olivia Gwyn

Someone is throwing a housewarming party for their friends,

loaves of bread are being brought and bowls of rice are being filled

Someone notices the leaves falling from the trees for the first time,

and a baby discovers their toes, wide-eyed

Someone is getting complimented at the register in the coffee shop 

and going to be thinking about it all day 

A middle aged mom is have a sleepover with her college best friends,

and someone is smiling at a text on their phone late at night

If you look closely, all around us,

someone is noticing someone,

somebody is making someone feel less alone

And it’s not much,

maybe not even enough,

but it is something

And it is something

for us not to forget to look

And there are reflections of stars

in the black of the river

if you stay 

long enough to notice the light 

What else is there to say?

What else is there to say?

by Olivia Gwyn

He made love to me like my body was a miracle

and now a miracle is forming inside me

And I worry you forget that

I’ve never done this before

But the Giver of life put life-giving in my veins 

where my blood flows and pours out 

and it is an outpouring of love

My daughter is born of blood sweat and tears 

like you

from the body of a woman

Holy holy holy 

is the Lord God

in the dirt, covered in blood

from the legs of a girl

who had never done this before

You said ‘do not be afraid’

and I bite my tongue to keep from rebuking you

I imagine the angels words 

ringing in her ears

as she watched you 

covered in your own blood 

hit the dirt

'Afraid'? My God

There are not words for what she felt

as she wished you back to the

blessed and cursed dirt 

where you lay crying and alive 

and covered in her own blood

My God, my God, why—

I believe in the dark that

you know a mother’s grief better than I 

So when you say,

‘I will not leave you as orphans,

I will come to you’

I am begging you

bent over my steering wheel 

pressing my palms to my eyes

unable to breathe 

against the weight of a dying people

I beg you to come to Palestine

as a destroyer 

and a mother

like a river in a dry land 

'Let my people go'

I am a broken tape—

what else is there to say?

“When the Lord restored the fortunes of Zion, we were like those who dream. Then our mouth was filled with laughter, and our tongue with shouts of joy… Restore our fortunes, O Lord, like streams in the Negeb! Those who sow in tears shall reap with shouts of joy! He who goes out weeping, bearing the seed for sowing, shall come home with shouts of joy, bringing his sheaves with him.”

‭‭Psalm‬ ‭126‬

I have been touched all my life

by Olivia Gwyn

I have been touched all my life

in so many insignificant ways

So it catches me by surprise 

to be caught by surprise on a June day 

while my feet are burning on the sand

It's always strange to bare your heart

to someone who's known you 

since you were a child

That's why it feels almost embarrassing 

to ask my Pawpaw if he want to come to the beach with me

when I know he doesn't go as much since knee surgery 

I beat around the bush and say he can come if he wants to 

when I really want him to know that I want him to

He's always been quiet,

even before the war 

I wish he never went, 

younger than me and foolish and in love 

and nowhere else to go

Except halfway across the world

where people were afraid and hurting and helpless and in love, too,

and nowhere else to go 

Anyway, he never talks about it

I feel kid-ish when he says he'll come

and he loads up the cart same as he's always done

since I was too young to remember

He carries the chairs and hands me 

his water bottle to carry in my bag

It sweats all on my book and I don't mind

I slow my pace to match his 

My feet are burning

on the cement-colored sand

when he asks me if I need him 

to put sunscreen on my back

I wasn't going to ask, but I say yes,

and I get a lump in my throat

at how gently, deliberately he rubs it in

His hands are leather

and we are quiet,

the only sound the wind off the sea,

blowing my hair in my eyes, the sand on my feet

I almost cry–

how many more times?–

at what it means to be cared for

The sunscreen spread carefully

down the curve of my back

How rare, how precious to be touched

by someone who stands to gain nothing by it

We cool our feet in the water

and laugh about how bad we are at telling the tides

and he asks if I can take a selfie of us in our chairs

On the way back home

I tell him I don't know why I didn't just tell him 

I wanted him to come

I guess I didn't want to make him do something he didn't want to

I guess I wanted him to want to

I guess I'm still scared of being seen wanting

But there are only so many June's when you are 25 and 76

and I will not spend them afraid of loving you

It is a privilege to love you every June we get

and I will still be loving you every June 

While I am missing your hands on my back in the heat,

wrinkles lined by ripples of sunscreen, 

hand over gentle hand

I am staying busy

I am staying busy 

by Olivia Gwyn

The sky fades to pink, lilac,

deep indigo,

black

I am busy loving you 

when the darkness comes 

I keep myself busy, ignoring 

the sound of the unknown knocking 

at the apartment door 

I am busy kissing you on the lips 

and carrying our daughter on my hips 

I stay busy looking up at the leaves

and placing books on hold at the library 

I am planning my daughter’s Halloween costume

for two years from now when I can’t see my hand 

held right in front of my face 

I am busy filling up notebooks, slowly, slowly,

letting the shower head rinse my hair

Feel it flow down my scalp 

running, collecting in rivulets over

my neck where my hair no longer falls 

I am running my hands through my hair 

and crying when I feel afraid 

and learning not to cower from the darkness 

Look at the light all around me

Let me press it into paper,

find my scissors and cut it into pieces,

folded over and over again, to confetti

Spread to the masses 

like You fed the 5,000

Abundance from lack,

enough from nothing,

faith like ashes

How generous You are to show us,

even when we were too stubborn to see

I am staying busy,

like the jar of oil 

in the hands of the widow

who had no reason to believe

Where I thought the darkness 

would consume me—

Bread and a little oil,

more than enough to go around

— olivia gwyn

 

Nothing but a hound dog

By Olivia Gwyn 

I let my poem out the door

and it runs on short legs

to go see the world

He sniffs the grass 

and doggedly chases

an audience

The squirrels easily outpace 

him with other things

on their mind

It doesn’t take long of this 

before he’s panting and looking 

for something to drink

He plops down on the short hay bales 

and scratches himself, wondering

if there’s something he should change

Eventually, he falls asleep

he didn’t notice, but a few people 

paused to admire him as he slept

He would’ve watched his drool 

if he’d known, but he’s a basset hound 

and he didn’t know

By the time he wakes up

it’s cooling down 

but the ground is still warm 

And he doesn’t feel like looking

for an audience, so

he lopes back home

I open the door 

and rub his ears

and he licks my face

And who cares about an audience anyway?

 

You are only 6 weeks old when you start smiling at yourself in the mirror

And I don’t need to 

use too many fancy 

words to say

I hope you never stop,

delighted at what you find there—

a miracle, remembering

How when God made 

you he made everything 

out of nothing

My whole world 

— olivia gwyn 

I watch my dad's sister cry

I watch my dad's sister cry

I watch as my dad’s sister cries,
telling us her dad will miss breakfast, and tries

to act like it’s not the beginning of the end, 

the forgetting

I listen as my friend tells me how much older

her parents are after being away,

how it feels like they’re leaving bit by bit 

every time she turns away

The loss never goes away
I keep waiting for it to pack up and go west, 
to leave me to plant my gardens and frame my pictures and buy flowers 

that remind me of you

But it lingers 

even before the loss has come
on the periphery,
like the blurred edges of a sepia photograph

Hasn't it always been this way?

I wait with bated breath 

for an answer,

begging under my breath 

to be proven wrong

— olivia gwyn

 

Springtime

It’s the Monday after Easter 

when I realize I only have a 

certain number of spring times left

Have you noticed? 

It makes me want to drag my feet 

and look closely at the spiderweb 

sprawled across open air 

I remember the need to take my shoes off, 

marvel at the specific green that appears 

for a day and then is gone

Teach me again to climb the trees 

one hand over the other, one foot over other,

one scraped forgotten knee over the other

Let me lie down in the shade,

feel the sun dab her brush of watercolors 

on my skin

Let me soak in the sound of the birds 

who’ve come back for us year after year,

after winter, after despair— hope

It never fails us, somehow

Let me grab hold of it with both hands

I will not count down the springtimes 

I have left on my hands

The promise of today is enough

This spring, the only one of its kind, 

precious and holy and good, like a reminder,

like a gift with intent to delight

— olivia gwyn

Waiting

I listen to my friends

crawling bruised on their knees

in the dark

Hoping for something else 

I’m tired of watching

us waiting

— olivia gwyn

 

 

Grief dances

Grief dances her way

through the streets of the slum

while the women whisper— 

No shame.

Grief lingers obtrusively

in the corner of your eye 

at every family gathering—

Sprinkles distaste on all your old favorites.

Grief hounds you at home,

begs you to leave,

wishes you would stay—

Never satisfied, like a mother, with your choice.

Grief returns 

like the cowboy in a western

come to duel for the soul 

of a dusty decrepit town.

She returns 

like the shivering autumn leaves

to the dirt,

like your unrelated aunt 

showing up to visit unannounced.

Grief crashes

to the floor like a pot 

from the kitchen cabinet 

in the middle of the night.

She is a sudden summer thunderstorm.

Grief returns 

like the hair tie you lost,

the water bottle you forgot about

and don’t want to wash,

like the cilantro you left in the fridge.

She returns 

like the golden retriever

at the end of Homeward Bound—

Stubborn, relentless,

            kissing your wet, 

                            messy face.

— olivia gwyn 

 

Lately I am tender

Lately everything

matters and hurts too much

and I feel young and tender

and jerk back from feeling

before it takes over

Lately I try to breathe 

against the hurt of the world

people are dying, wanting,

fighting, losing, losing,

and I know them all

Lately I count money

to a soundtrack of an empty room

an empty seat at someone's table

and this is all too ugly for a poem

and I hate it and I hate it

and I want it to be gone

Lately I am tender 

but some people can't afford to be

Lately I am tender

and look for gentleness in your face

and I can't always see

but your face too is tender

and it weeps for all these things

— olivia gwyn 

Let me hold you a little while longer

 

Let me hold you a little while longer

I roll over in the middle of the night / to go pee for the third time / while our leader sleeps soundly through the night / I stumble reaching to turn the florescent light on / and worry about what kind of world / I’m bringing you into / while the most powerful man in the country / shines his fluorescent white teeth / in the name of exclusivity / The sun goes to bed early and comes up late / and my dreams are dark and / drag at my limbs to stay in bed / You kick me from the inside / and I know you are almost ready to face / the cruel world, the fluorescent, angry lights / I dream for you in the dark / gentle sunlight on your face / young grass clutched eagerly in your firm fists / toes dipped in cool clear water / and shrieks of delight from your sun dappled cheeks / One more night I whisper / and try not to cry and instead / try to think of every good thing that could ever be / and not about how I’ll never again / have you here so close to me / the illusion of safety / Let me hold you a little while longer / Let me dream for you and build / with my own two hands against the rising tide / a world more kind than home.

— olivia gwyn 

Mercy

  

Mercy

The sun hits me in my eyes 
on the way home from my appointment
you beside me driving home 

The sun hurts my eyes and my head 
and I snap at you and worry about
what I don’t know

You offer me pineapple out of your open hand
and I could cry with my eyes closed
against the merciless light of the sun

How easily I forget 
what I do know

How quickly I am offered 
another chance to remember 

You 
you 
you

— olivia gwyn