benchmarks//thankyou

on why benchmarks aren't quantifiable and probably we should all listen more and just let go of the idea of any sequence or supposition of what living is; a thank you


a first kiss -- tingling, impossible,
heat spreading like a winged thing 
everywhere alive -- and first rejection
and maybe your third or fourth too
dragging your self-worth up from bed
real talk in the mirror that your watery
eyes can't quite fix on, not yet, not
even when the next person comes 
along to notice how you laugh but gradually
in the soft dark hours cradled by friends
kindling a laughter to split the night with joy 
despite a growing sense that so much
will never be fair, these rich inheritances
of what was here and what was made, still
when the objects you make with your
hands begin to take on a life of their own
a delicacy and love and you feel a tug
of what is possible, an urgency of 
maternal artistry, when your mother 
suddenly and without warning, your 
onion eating sweater knitting weeping
drinking messy home of a mother
dies, and you fall, and nothing
has light and all is water and when your 
friend's baby is placed in your arms and
you can almost see this vibrating chord
humming in the air between them and later,
holding the wrists of someone who lived through
it all, who saw inventions that bombed
the world and fell in love and saw children
die before them and all you can think is how 
soft their skin is, gently wrinkling under
your vitality, and how still they seem 
to be laughing