Three Poems by Mary Phillips

I’ve Been Meaning to Tell You…

I’ve been meaning to say that I see you.
And I’ve been meaning to tell you that there is so much in my eyes when I see you.
I see struggle.
I see pain.
I see grief.
I see desperation.

And I also see Fire. Fight.
Imagination that never gives up.
I feel the energy of the fight you keep fighting, that I can’t fight for you.
But I can tell you that I see you doing it.
You're upright. Moving forward, even if it’s forward after many steps back.
You keep going, you keep stepping, and I wonder what you’re moving toward.
I wonder, because I know it’s something.
It’s important.
It’s meaningful and it’s life and it’s your life and
I’ve been meaning to tell you that you’re brave, and
Magically you, like no one else is-
Whether painting a mural to honor your dead friend who is invisible to everyone else, but now
never invisible again…
Or writing song lyrics that move me to shivering chills.
Or telling me a story in the way you do that makes me laugh and cry at exactly the same time,
all at once, like no one else can.

I’ve been meaning to remind you that your place in this world is like the top of the mountains
that you love so much, stretching toward the clouds.
Mysterious. Beautiful. Full of magic.
I wonder what’s up there?
I may never know, but I know it’s something and that’s all I need to know.

How It Shaped Me….

I don’t understand so many things…

Like how I used to love most all of every day
and how I thought the world was safe and kind
and how I believed in good things- like friends and magic and dreams and adventures.
And doing the right thing just because it’s the right thing,
And believing that that alone would make things okay.

And then addiction happened. Chaos. Destruction. Lies. Pain, and nothing that makes sense.

And then I got squeezed into a different shape and instead of feeling like a cloud spreading out
in the sky and softly filling up the day with the shapes of hope and life,
I shrunk.
I became hard and tight. Scar tissue.

I think in trying to protect myself, I clenched down inside myself and decreased my surface area
to allow as little exposure as possible.
I could not tolerate the touch of addiction, and its pain and hurt and fear.

But I don’t breathe well in that shape.

I want to expand back out into the softness of the clouds I see on many days up in the sky,
looking so peaceful and dreamlike.
I want to feel more like slow wind- coolish or just a little warm but always soft and gentle,
like the comfort I used to feel when my grandmother filled up the cookie jar and told me another
irreverent story and we could just laugh.
I still have that acorn cookie jar, and I can still smell the brown sugar smell now, 50 years later.

I want to return to the shape of easy laughter and deep breaths that contain the smell of love.

I Want To Forget It….

My brain. It won’t stop. It’s like tennis gone wrong and the balls are bouncing off walls that aren’t
even there. Thoughts, memories, shame- everything that’s gone wrong and it’s all my fault,
probably, and nothing good because you can’t remember the good when your amygdala is so
full of everything you want to forget. There is no room for the good when my brain is torturing
itself by assigning monumental importance to “the thing” I’ve done that I can’t even identify. It’s
almost arrogant, as if anything I’ve done should even have that much salience or take up that
much room in the universe.

And now it’s happening again- I can’t forget how selfish I am to want to forget…how dare I think
about letting go of the filler that would allow room for some peace if it were forgotten. Because
then I wouldn’t be doing penance any longer, and I can’t let that happen, I don’t deserve for that
to happen. So I’ll never let you forget.

But how about this…I’ll build a new room, make a new space to plant something different and
fresh- nothing fancy- even an old wicker basket on the back of a broken down bicycle will do- I’ll
just fill the basket with cool loamy soil and plant it full of wildflowers. Lean it against the shed out
in the garden. See what grows. Paint it turquoise blue, maybe. Look how beautiful that piece of
junk is now…and for a moment I forgot what was wrong not so long ago.