Ode to a Night Owl

The other day I killed a night owl with a single shot

It was easy

I just asked it
To help me catch a bitter worm the next morning
And it rolled right over, underbelly revealed
Too soft to handle hard surprises
Too selfish and delicate

To witness harsh sunrises

That was when I let you disappoint me for the final round

Of inconvenience meaning more than our friendship

You know no means no

But so does yes when delivered with a groan

I heard the night owl’s complaint piercingly clear

So mom drove me to the airport instead

And I didn’t I realize it yet

But I was already over you then

While I was losing my father to empty bottles

You were losing me to hollow promises

Of brotherhood and being there

I shouldn’t have to tell you

Calling yourself my last resort

Doesn’t count as showing up

And I’ve got more love on the line

And someone else will always volunteer

To hug me goodbye

If you aren’t feeling up to it

If you can’t get up for it on time

I guess you thought I’d understand

Since it’s how you’ve always been

It’s all cute and quirky until someone’s getting hurt

And needs a ride to save her father’s life

Or maybe just her own

You don’t know that he wasn’t in the van

That I flew home alone

Shattered and still shaking from the threats that he leveled

Gas pedals and sirens and lies that he leverage

And cops that saw through it

And the moment I knew that I couldn’t

You didn’t ask if it all worked out

You let the nights lengthen and that’s how it lasted

And you haven’t changed your password

Or your agenda

Or your lack of compassion

I guess I’m just your history now

I once fought for your trust

While you sat in the background

You didn’t answer the call

When I asked you to stand up

You acted like it wasn’t

The worst two weeks of my life

Like I didn’t need you

Like hell isn’t a place that I could possibly wind up

Like you wouldn’t sweat for a friend who was burning

It was hot in the kitchen and you turned on the TV

Left a pot boiling dry on the stove while you kicked back

And lit another bowl so you could just check out

Remaining calm in a crisis is simple

When you decline it with silence

Guess you got off easy

But definitely early

I thought we had years left in the making

But now I’ll take credit for calling the score

I left the ball in your court and waited to volley

But I set down my racket when the ref finally told me

That you never bothered with picking up yours

I once broke down your walls

Never thought that you could break down my patience

The sheep that broke the collie’s back

Only cried wolf when it truly mattered

Turns out wolves work all hours

And I’m sorry to tell you

That love doesn’t call in sick

When it's not in the mood for taking the morning shift

The flock lost a few members

I don’t think you remember

The love that broke down your walls was a gift

I thought there was something worthwhile to get to

Turns out all these years

It was just an empty pasture

Of unruffled feathers

And the ghost of a wolf-haunted lamb that once grazed there

Am I Being "Good"?

 I've been asking myself lately if I am willing to do whatever it takes to achieve my goals. It seems like the answer is usually "no", and I hate that. Especially because "whatever it takes" is usually something as small as not eating so much bread and peanut butter.

Ever since college, I've aspired to create and live within a perfect routine, to be like a robot running on a programmed loop of habits. Wake up, get dressed, workout, eat breakfast, shower, get dressed again, fix hair, skin care, go to work, eat lunch, work more, clean the house, write, practice piano, practice German, practice for choir, do chores, spend time with my husband, read, journal, go to bed on time, over and over and over.

The problems come during all the little moments when I deviate from my perfect program. I'm not a robot. I want to stay in bed and cuddle. I want to put extra peanut butter in my oatmeal. I want to bake cookies even though I didn't allocate time or calories for cookies. I want to spend an hour on the phone with my sister or my friend or my mom. I want to watch Netflix. I want to fill in a coloring book page. I want to deviate from the path. I want to rebel against my own plans. I want my dreams and my immediate desires to have nothing to do with each, to create no conflict, to require no sacrifice.

I can say "no" to things for a week, maybe a month. Eventually I no longer feel alive and I have to throw off the chains I wrote rules about and throw handfuls of figurative confetti into the air, snap my fingers, watch them burn, and dance with abandon on the ashes. As much as I want to build, to create, to grow, I want to destroy, to neglect, to deteriorate, to take risks, to flaunt my mortality, to whither daintily, suffer dramatically, and die beautifully. I am rubbernecking in the slow lane, watching my own crash unfold. At the same time, I'm changing my own tire and driving my own tow truck and bootstrapping myself into a better life. No wonder fall asleep sometimes telling God and the darkness, "I wonder who I am." I can't quite tell. I sure look like the picture of domesticity. I sure clean up nice. I sure want to buy another motorcycle and ride it too fast in the rain. I sure love drinking too much coffee. I sure love being a know-it-all about the ways unhealthy food is going to kill you, even though I don't follow my own advice 30% of the time.

You know that story about the two wolves, the dark and the light? Mine are both quite well fed and always ripping each other's throats out. And there aren't just two, it seems. It's a whole pack, and they're howling confusing directions and competing priorities until I'm deaf with their noise.

In high school, we used to say to each other with righteous smiles, "Consistency is the hallmark of ethics." I thought it was true. It's not exactly true, although I won't talk about why right now, but it's also even more important than I realized back then, so it's good that we said it and tried hard. Sometimes you learn a lesson, and then twenty years later you find out why you learned it and then you think, "Ah, now I know."

Sometimes I wish my day to day ethics weren't quite so wrapped up in the miles I run and the grams of peanut butter I eat. It's hard to measure, unfortunately, how polite I am on Zoom calls when I'm tired and whether I'm too harsh a critic of my family members and if I really listened attentively to the story my husband told me or just nodded along. When days end and I ask "Was I good today?" I think too quickly of things I can put into spreadsheets and not often enough of things I can put on a tombstone.

I mean, I guess you could put

"Loving Wife and Daughter

30g oats, 10g chia seeds, 18g peanut butter

Ran 2 miles on mornings it didn't rain hard"

on my tombstone. I won't be coming back to complain.

In the meantime, can I be a bit more of a good little robot who doesn't pick a new workout and diet plan every two weeks, and also, at the same time, a bit more of a good little human who keeps love and truth first, where they belong?

There are two wolves inside all of us, and one of them really likes tracking things in spreadsheets. The other one likes cookies, cuddles, and motorcycles.

Published in Havok!

 I am very pleased that today one of my short stories, "Fostering the Goddess", was published on Havok's website.

You can check it out here: www.gohavok.com

(After today, it will be behind their paywall -- Havok is a subscription site.)