Refrigerator

 This poem is meant to be heard, rather than read.

Here is a link to what it sounds like.

 
“Haiku are easy
But sometimes they don’t feel good
Refrigerator.”


You reorganized my refrigerator.

Three weeks before you broke up with me.

We had been playing house for the weekend, spending every moment in each other’s company, and we were hosting a dinner party for our common friends.

Cooking together with you was always a frenetic form of joy.  Our differences in culinary philosophy just great enough to leave us combative-to-the-point-of-turned-on whenever we opened one another’s fridges.

Every time I opened yours I wanted to stop what I was doing and throw away the half-dozen cardboard carrying structures and bags, each now containing one yogurt, or apple sauce, or string cheese, or whatever girl-dinner food you’d been using lately to counterbalance the fact that you really do not cook for yourself, despite being such a talented chef.

And every time you delved into mine you yelped in derision as the wide doors slammed open, shelves rattling and overflowing with sauces and seasonings I’d used once and ignored for a year. . . or a decade.
 
And so in that frenzy of cooking and preparing you had shouted “I AM REORGANIZING YOUR FRIDGE” in an outdoor-voice and I had laughed back with delight that you were welcome to it, and kissed you, and returned to whatever I was doing, because you are brilliant, and rational, and my kitchen could always use the help.

I figured, I’d talk with you about it later, and get you to tell me your reasoning, so I could enforce whatever zoning laws would determine where my mustard, and butter were allowed to live, and know where to marshal my cheese forces for the next Charcuterie board army.

But there were so many things to do before guests arrived, so I didn’t take the time to ask you about the information architecture choices you were making. . . until, well, it wasn’t really appropriate anymore.

So now, whenever I go for a drink, or to feed myself, there’s a moment of hesitation and confusion, as I stare into the abyss of order that I don’t understand.

It’s not chaos, there’s clearly a reason the leftover black olives and the miso are nestled so close together – salty flavors?  Packages of roughly the same height? .  . . brown things?
 

I don’t know what’s what, right now.

Three weeks after that dinner party, when you were telling me that what I offered couldn’t be enough for you – that the only options were extremes and you knew I wouldn’t choose to be your All, so you were choosing to make me your Nothing – it seemed the best we could remember in terms of logistics was to agree that I would hold on to your spare pillow, until we might be on speaking terms in the winter, that you’d tell most of our friends so they didn’t have to hear it from me that you’d decided we couldn’t make this work.

And at the time I didn’t think to say “wait. . . can you . . .just. . . draw me a map of my fridge I guess?”

Maybe I should have, because the confusion always makes me remember your feet spinning lightly across my kitchen floor, your hands full of my possessions and provisions, your singing voice clamped around my heart like a vice, and the sense that I was comfortable and safe with the uncertainty you were causing, because I trusted you to do what was best for me.

I am glad that you did what was best for you, too.

I didn’t bite my tongue and keep the words behind it that morning because I thought you were wrong about us.

You made it clear by what you said that you weren’t wrong about us.

So I will struggle, with all that I am, to wrestle myself into the form of a man who can accept this least-welcome “No” as a gift.

But I reach now for a grape, or a beer, or a salad dressing, and I am standing in the rain on the street in front of your house. Watching your eyes fill with tears.

And I’m not gonna reset it.

I won’t put things back “where they go.”

This is where they go, now.

Because sometimes grieving looks like crying.

And sometimes grieving looks like muttering “shit” under your breath, every time you reach for the mayonnaise.

"Religious Trauma"

I can see you in the distance
I can hear you, from afar
Should I offer some assistance?
Should it matter who you are?

I don't have much baggage about religion -- the religion I practiced, as child, and as a young man, was pretty direct. I'd say I focused more on service to God than worship, and that seemed to suit us both just fine from my perspective.

But damn, do I have some baggage about church ladies.

We all get hurt by love
We all have our cross to bear
but in the name of understanding
your problem should be shared
Confide In Me
Confide In . . .

If you've never lived in the deep south, maybe you've had the luxury of missing out on the peculiar experience of having someone look you in the eye and tell you something warm, and kind, and thoughtful. . .

"That was a beautiful performance."
"You're one of us. You belong here."
"Any space I’m in is one that is explicitly welcome to you."
"I've always loved the way you see things."

. . . and then realizing that they would never, ever say that same thing in a context where anyone else could hear them. And perhaps, in fact, in the context of social pressure to say something else, they'd say the opposite.

"He's got a long way to go."
"Anybody should feel welcome here. I don't think we should have to change for her."
"publicly inviting you to something wouldn't feel authentic to me."
"He's just so cruel and combative."

Let's just say that it's a world that elevated going-along-to-get-along to an art form.

I can keep a secret
and throw away the key
it's sometimes hard with these things
but do you
feel safe
with me

My mother was an army brat, who took more after her infantry-officer father than after her artist mother, and put everything she owned in a van and drove out of the South as soon as the ink on her high school diploma was dry.

She kicked around the West (Colorado) and the North (Minnesota, Michigan) for years. Got married. Had a daughter. Hated the cold but loved the culture. The directness of it. The honesty of it. Clear and crisp and cold and true.

She came back to the South just before she had me. But she hated it.

We all get hurt by love
We all have our cross to bear
but in the name of understanding
your problem should be shared
Confide In Me
Confide In Me
Confide In Me. . .
Confide In Me. . .

She spent my youth trying to figure out how to move North again. Struggling with her position as a brilliant, cunning, and opinionated woman in a place where Women Did Not Speak Their Minds.

She was a rebel with 9 causes and no fear and she ran afoul of . . . well, everybody.

Skip or twist
the choice is yours
hit or miss
what's mine is yours
Skip or twice
the choice is yours
hit or miss
what's mine is yours

She taught me to be wary of any statement you only hear in private.

If a person won't say it in front of someone else. . . you can damn sure believe that it's less about whether or not they really believe it, and more that they want the benefit of you thinking it's how they feel.

We all get hurt by love
We all have our cross to bear
but in the name of understanding
your problem should be shared
Confide In Me
Confide In Me
Confide In Me. . .
Confide In Me. . .

So today, when somebody tells me they think I'm valuable to their community . . .

Well, let's just say that sometimes, I have a hard time believing it, and an easy way of testing it.

"I love that you feel that way. Would you mind saying it in front of a crowd of your friends?"

Lyrics: Ben Lee - Confide in Me (2002)