Tendrils (A poem)

I.

I don’t want anyone
I’ve ever loved
to leave me now

This rigid clinging
feels necessary
feels vital
feels deadly

I don't know how
to move beyond it
and yet
I know that I must

I must go out for dinner
with a smile on my face
I must go to the grocery
store
and find there the
ingredients necessary
for life
for a future
for change

II.


A little shoot is poking
at the valves and
chambers
deep inside my heart

Mitral
Ventral
What the hell

All feel the disturbance of
something growing

It is something born of
endings
it is something terrified of
beginnings

It can't help itself

It is inexorable
relentless
defiant
tender
tiny

but growing

making an irritating
scritch
scritch
scritch
as it perforates the walls

When it is fully grown
its roots will fill my lungs
its stem will twine round
my esophagus
and burst out
from under my tongue

*****

I wrote this poem in the winter of 2014–2015. It began in one of Firefly Creative Writing's wonderful on-line classes. It was improved with feedback from my mom, poet Janet Barkhouse, whose poems have been published in many periodicals and whose blog can be found here.