075: liturgy

I used to do this, when life was scenic. Now it’s just towers steepling into the mist. Drinking until the paper is blank. Clutching rails, glaring at my reflection as it sways. Opening the book of chances and shutting it again at once. Crossing the street away from the headlights, the voices, the serene smoke. Waiting for the neighbor cat. Leaving clothes on the floor. Wandering the aisles, unable to imagine one meal. Swallowing the salad. Clinging in the dark. Scribbling out the endless liturgy of how am I doing. Promising myself I’m not at fault. Playing at real life. 

074 : how many times

How many times have I gone to that ocean, seeking something? How many times have I come at dusk and seen two stars (maybe one an airplane) over the wash of purple and blue above the islands? How many times have I seen waves lapping over black rocks, stepped onto rims of sand at low tide, admired shells beneath me, looked across to where the sunset gleams over Salem? Always, underneath everything, a question. Something too large for a house or a head.

How many times have I gone to that ocean and come away with an answer?

A few.

073: impression

Art museums are exhausting. A thousand choices to make—which paintings to stop at, which to stroll past, which placards to read. And at each painting, so much to do—first, to arrive, to pause thoughtfully. Then to draw up a response, a feeling, a thought—some kind of reaction that is both naturally conceived and correct. It is not enough to look at a painting and think, “I like this one”. You must come up with a response that has weight, heft, interest. You have lines to follow, shapes to trace, colors and gradations to dive into. A hundred times you must do this, over and over, for every piece of art, and all while being quiet and not looking at the guards too often and not giving off the impression that you’re about to steal a painting.

072: honeysuckle

The south side of the street is rimmed with honeysuckle. I walked out this morning and caught a richly floral scent, but couldn’t tell where it came from. Tonight I walked home that way, descended into the valley of the scent again—and on my left were the honeysuckle bushes, and I said, “Oh! That’s what I smelled this morning.” Only this time it was deepened, vivified, by the rain pattering around it and dripping through it. It was like tea—flowers and leaves dipped and steeped in a basket of rain, made deeper, more real, more wet, luscious, reverent.

071: river

Sitting on the deck in my not-broken chair. Sunset, on the cusp of dusk. A drippingly, deathly hot day tips gently over into a cool, dry evening. Screen doors open and shut, cars whisper by three stories below. Basements hum. Trees tremble gently. The ocean, somewhere, breathes.

Finishing Once Upon a River by Diane Setterfield—a book about a little girl, drowned and then revived again—and then looking at the bookmark I have used from the beginning, a postcard, a drawing of a girl overlooking a body of water. An ocean, clearly, but it could be a river.

070: steam

It drives people in, to the interiors, into the catalogues of plates, coffee cups, small spirals of steam, concentrates of the hissing rain outside. The pavement smokes, the umbrellas cower. The people run, take shelter under anything three-dimensional. They run blindly. Everyone, everyone talks about the rain, the cold, how unseasonal, as if every summer they’ve lived through has been a straight-up glass of sunshine. I stand in the midst of the people run out of the mist, hand their plates and their coffees to them, say to them yes, I hate it too, which is a lie.

069: dust

The dust from the sky and ceiling
clusters the glass, darkens the thoughts as they appear.
Everything is sun-streaked, water-tight, empty,
over-saturated.
Our lips may as well have bled.
I remember the forget-me-nots
pouring themselves over the dell,
how you laughed at me,
how you forgot about me.
I remember the way my face looked
in the glass after the dark forced me out
of our bed and into the doorway.
The bruise that formed invisibly,
the bruise I gave myself.
The kitchen, its sketched clutter suspended
underwater, the shadows like arms
keeping me out.

068: fleet

After my shower I was standing in the bathroom combing my hair and through the skylight I heard a motorcycle zooming up the side street, blaring music––but instead of something dark and thumping and horrific, it was, of all things, Fleet Foxes. Mykonos. A song I know, and love, and hum sometimes.

~

What kind of bird is it that perches atop a telephone pole, pauses, then nosedives into the sky below (for technically, the sky does not end when you get to the houses), disappearing from sight, thoughtless as I would be when walking from one room to another?