Tag Archives: grief

Crumbs II

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You say
people should accept
whatever love
is given.

But you would make me a beggar.
You would make yourself
a noble benefactor,
absolving yourself
of lingering guilt
for my hunger.

Sometimes dignity
nourishes more
than charity.
Not all hungers are eased
by common morsels.

Perhaps your scraps
provoke my allergies
or intolerance.
Perhaps they fuel addiction
cause adverse reactions
or come with conditions
I cannot abide.

There are darker afflictions
than a growling belly
and gnawing heart.
And kinder favors
than selfish crumbs
disguised as
“love”.

© S. Rinderle, January 2024

Inheritance

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31 spoons
27 knives
25 dinner forks
11 salad forks
3 ladles
2 butter knives
2 cake servers
1 bread knife
1 ice tongs
1 cocktail fork
1 tomato server
1 letter opener
and 1 complete tea service.

This is the family silver
inherited from my mother
who guarded them in life
as if her worth
depended on it.
She built a secret hiding place
issued secret instructions
ceremoniously cherished every piece
and dutifully shouldered the legacy
of unkind ancestors
as if it were her honor.

112 pieces of silver
22 hours of my life
researching, inquiring, packing, shipping
Total worth:
$100.50

My mother spent decades
protecting the worthless.
She held as precious
what was nothing
but cheap, common tools —
nothing but
misplaced ambition,
and misguided aspiration
like her mother’s pearl necklace
reverentially bestowed upon me
like a prized heirloom –
pretentious gems
revealed as fakes
like my grandmother.

She buffed and polished
my mother into a design
of her own desires.
My mother posed and pleased
but yearned to be one of the boys
just for the respect.
She avoided forging me but
ended up forcing me
to carry the resentment and envy
of her lineage anyway.
Six generations of daughters,
dusty farms
hardened shame
suppressed genius
and our mothers’
stoic trauma.

Meanwhile, my father’s genius
was granted a seat
at a celebrated banquet table.
A class refugee,
he abandoned his culture
by the roadside
en route to opportunity
which earned silver medals
he tossed aside to me
like a worthless penny
in a fountain
bearing a careless wish.

21 silver medals
Total worth:
$1,365.00

My mother clung to value
where there was none
like a ghost clings
to the site of their demise,
unable to go home.

My father denied value
where it abounded
like a miser covets
what he already owns,
eternally empty and unsatisfied.

Both were blind to true worth.
Both failed to discern
the true value of things,
including the treasure
family truly brings.

I am the child
of both.

© S. Rinderle, August 2023

Queen of Thorns

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I put her on a pedestal
raised her to the throne
she could do no wrong
I thought
she deserved to be worshipped
deferred to
and made space for.
She was worthy,
but not of my overripe generosity,
genuflection
and unilateral concession.

But I blamed her
when she eventually abused her power
like all coddled rulers
and deified mortals.
I blamed her
when her chronic absenteeism
abandoned me,
when her nepotism
excluded me.

I should have read the signs
but they don’t apply
when you’re riding
a Bugatti.
I mistook shotgun
for the driver’s seat,
mistook the shotgun
for a benevolent scepter.

I thought I was exceptional,
that patterns don’t apply
to me.
Now I see
I’m just one strand
of the weave.

© S. Rinderle, October 2023

image source: Larian718 @deviantart.com

Sacred Yearning

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I want
something to call my own, I want
someplace I can call home, I want
someone who always picks up
when I call.

I want
that which is everyone’s birthright
like a watery cross
painted on my forehead by patriarchy
grace that seems to have skipped me
at the baptismal font of culture
that wasn’t built to sanctify me.

I want
to find my fellow travelers
those misfits and oddballs like me, the ones
who change expectations
and skew the middle
with our alien eyes and strange voices.

I want my tribe, I want
what humans before civilization
never had to want.
It was bestowed on arrival
with that first gasp of air
by our amphibian lungs;
that first cry that declared:
I am here!

I want
to want for nothing
I need
to just survive.

© S. Rinderle, September 2023

Image: SHANNON DRAWE/ISTOCKPHOTO/THINKSTOCK

Spelunking

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I got lost in the cave again
even though this time
I came prepared
with ropes and ties
headlamp and map
and a full canteen.

What got me out before
was mere curiosity
about what awaited
around the next bend
if I just persevered.

Before,
I had guides.
There was always
a candle in the distant dark
a small crack of bright yellow
or a whispering breeze
inviting a path
up, up, and out again
to the warm stars
and soft greenery.

This time
there is no candle.
Just night so thick and weighty
I could touch it
of only my fingers obeyed.
Just claustrophobic silence
like the utter stillness
that never knew sound
before the big bang.

This time
I have neither direction nor hope
my limbs are exhausted
and my canteen is dry.
This time
I can only wait
for the punishing rocks
to move on their own.

This time
my curiosity is spent.
This time
what will rescue me
from this unending, dank doom
is neither hope nor faith
but the child’s insistence
that this story must
must
have a better ending than this.
That this book cannot end
with my lonely, mossy bones
lost
in a cave.

© S. Rinderle, January 2023

(** If someone you know is struggling with depression, or has expressed a desire to end their life, please don’t give them a phone number or tired cliché. Please take them seriously and sit with them in the cave, or stay with them until you can find a way out, together.)

Castaway

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If you survive
when the ship capsizes,
if you avoid
the hulking masts and jagged iron
as they plummet into the sea
like panicked missiles,
if you reach the surface
and burst into air
amid flaming flotsam,

what then?

You swim
you bob
you float on your back
you pray for rain
you stay awake.

And if the currents are merciful
you meet an island to cling to
where soft shores
cradle your weary, seasick head
fresh coconut springs
revive your withered throat
and massive stones
ground your cracked, salty feet
and grant refuge
from the threat of the deep.

But even the bravest isle
is no haven
from planetary maelstrom.
Eventually it too erodes
and you find yourself
afloat again
courageously paddling
towards a hopeful horizon
to the next friendly island
til the cataclysm
destroys it
too.

If your terrorized muscles
stop responding to faith
and answer only to survival,
what then?

What now?

Now that years are counted in decades
joints weakened by effort
skin furrowed by worry
eyesight blurry
and optimism spent
on too many gambles lost?

Perhaps the time has come
to mistrust the tides
and forgive depleted limbs.

Perhaps it’s time
to grow gills

time
to surrender
and breathe
underwater.

© S. Rinderle, January 2023

Crumbs

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I will no longer
eat your crumbs,
no longer nibble in vain
trying to fill my hollow belly
with the sad scraps you toss
from your barren table.

You made me a beggar
then scorned my hunger.
You starved me in your house
then accused me of malnourishment
and denied me alms.

Your lying morsels
tempt me into hoping
a meal is coming
while your kitchen is bare.
They trick me into believing
crumbs are the only food
despite the orchards outside.
They train me into accepting
only crumbs
as my lot.

But crumbs are mean appetizers
masquerading as a feast
that starve more cruelly
than a fast.
Crumbs are rotting remnants
of someone else’s banquet.

Wandering ravenous
in the village dark,
the haze finally revealed
other houses
with open doors.
I met skilled cooks
with stocked pantries
flaming hearths
and generous hands.

Now that I’m fed
I’m safe enough
to stop begging for trash,
free enough
to reject your miserly dregs.

Now that my cells know nourishment
I’ve no need
to haunt your impoverished table
ever
again.

© S. Rinderle, November 2022

For Stephen

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If I’d known
I would have halted all minutia
and rushed to your side.
I would have climbed that oak tree
begged you to come down
and eased the noose
you’d tightened.

We’ve never met,
but if I’d known
I would have braved the gauntlet of L.A. traffic
endured the untimely chill
and pierced the early dark
to get to you
in time.

I would have opened my ears
to your floodgates,
loosened the reins of my heart
to ride beside yours,
and stretched my comforting arms
around your volcanic ribs.

I would have said:
Me too, gentle warrior.
I, too, know the reasons
and they are plenty.
I will not shame or dissuade you.
I know the hell that hides
behind the brightest eyes
and whitest smiles.

I would have said:
Sweet firefly
you are a star
that shines brighter
than neon.
If not you, who?

I would have told you:
I cannot promise you hope
for the world is bleak and pale
because we made it so.
I cannot offer you respite
for the toil never ends
for a tender soul.

But I would have promised love
because seedlings sprout
in the wake of a bulldozer’s wrath
even when the tree’s destruction
is certain.
I would have promised love
because your lovers
are already legion.

Brother,
(May I call you Brother?
No reference to your magnificent Blackness
but to our kinship bond
as artists who find god
in cyclones of muscle and bone
waterfalls of arms and knees
and the eternal heartbeat
of sound.)

Brother,
if I’d known
I would have brought you
a thousand candles
to light the dark cavern
of your creeping night
like your spark lit mine.
I would have brought you
all the white roses ever planted
one for every gift you granted
before your wick
extinguished.

Anything
to illuminate this tarnished shadow
that’s lengthened
since you disappeared
down the empty end
of a gun.

If you’d known
that shot fired
into your inconsolable wilderness
would trigger an avalanche of devotion,
would you have stayed?

If you’d known
your heartquake
would cause a tsunami of salty grief,
would you have waited?

Please wait! Please stay.

© S. Rinderle, December 15, 2022
In Memory of Stephen “tWitch” Boss, 1982 – 2022. Rest in Power, dear one.

Epilogue

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If we survive
our descendants may look back
on the decline
of our “civilized” empire
and wonder:
Did they know?
When they realized,
were they kind?
Or did they
scratch each other bloody
with dull, infected claws?

After the EMPs and EFTs
and AIs and IEDs
they’ll wonder about us:
Did they try to stop it?
Were there no prophets?
How were their wise ones ignorant
of what our little ones understand:

That no human survives alone
nor thrives when the few
have too much.
That all the children reap the harvest
of all the ancestors’ seeds.
That we need the rivers and trees,
the rain and rotting soil,
the butterflies and sunrise
far more than they need us.
And all life
is finite.

They will stand where they imagine
our graves might lie,
asking,
yet hear only silence.

Still, my ghost will call out
from beneath roots and shoots
and centuries of sediment:
Yes, we did.
But we were too few and too late.

You still have time.
The Earth awaits,
indifferent.

© S. Rinderle, October 2022

100

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I don’t ever want
to get old,
to end up grinning toothless
with hollow eyes,
vacant mind,
and bent fingers
waving at strangers.

I don’t want
to end up a wispy husk
a mockery of my former vitality
being spoonfed cake
by youthful greyhairs
in a cold, white room
where metal creaks,
decaying flesh hangs,
and death’s scent hovers.

“Don’t ever let me
get like that”
my mother instructed.
“Slip something into
my chicken soup.
Or better yet, my martini!”

No need.
She dropped dead at 55
in her prime,
head cushioned
en route to the floor
by the quick hands
of her fellow yogis.

She left behind
lists on the kitchen counter
unwrapped gifts in the cupboard
stunned loved ones in the great house
and complete clarity
that she was utterly finished.

She was wise.
She did not linger
with trembling limbs
and the stink of death on her lips,
or the bewildered stare
of an animal that has outlived
its joy and purpose.

Why do we celebrate number of years
as triumph?
Years lived
years wedded
years labored
when all this requires
is stubbornness, luck,
or the ability to bear habitual burdens.
This is nothing to praise
unless such endurance
was also fruitful,
sufficiently joyous
and freely chosen.

To grow old
is to travel backwards,
to experience second childhood
then infancy.
I expect mine
to be no less cruel
than the first
and no less lonely.

They say we die
as we lived.
Let it be so
for me.
Let me flame out!
Let me be
a plunging meteor carrying nothing
but dignity and a few regrets,
instead of long-expired relief
obeying gravity.

I will bear my solitude
as long as my end
can be swift
and unambiguous.

© S. Rinderle, July 2022

(Published on the 23rd anniversary of my mother’s death)

Photo: Pablo Carlos Budassi, CC BY-SA 4.0, via Wikimedia Commons