061: blessings

Sometimes I count blessings on the way to work. Number one is almost always the boy––his kisses, his face in the morning light, his cute sleeping position, his love for me. Number two was seagulls—hearing them as soon as I walked outside. It was the faintest, farthest breath of summer, of standing by the sea. Number three was a black goldendoodle, tied to a post outside a café. I held out my hand and she sniffed it, gently. Not quite close enough for me to feel the wet nose. But it was enough. It was more than enough.

060: out the window

Seeing Val walk by while wiping down one of the high tops. Walking by, on the sunny sidewalk in the bitter cold, her eyes hidden behind big galactic sunglasses, her new haircut covered by a knit hat. Wearing a tan suede lambswool-lined coat, her bright yellow handbag slung across her body and bouncing gently by her hip. She saw me through the window, smiled and gave me a wave. I waved back, over the heads of some ladies clustered by the window. They probably thought I was waving at them, initially, and then decided I was off my nut.

059: the fourth

The heat of noon, of three, of four.

The heat of smoke, of coal.

Of anxiety.

Of yesterdays I can't forget about,

tomorrows for which the fear is gestating.

Shut-in rooms, blinds, bruised shin bones.

Fruit plunged into water. Sound

lengthened into wasteland.

Am I halfway there yet?

This isn't poetry.

It's life, tiny specks of it,

in an attempt to make what I am living

feel like life.

I read something earlier today

that said life is made up of the small things,

the small moments in between the "life-

defining moments".

I am trying

to start

believing that.

058: how come I can only ever write about rain?

It rained, finally, this morning. I woke sometime after three and lay in the dark, half-aware, blinking into the black beneath the blinds—at the soft rain pouring like breath against the windowscreen, at the hesitant shimmer of water in the light, the deserted streetlamps.

Then, this evening, the lawns in Honeoye Falls (our last week here) stretched out as if dead, yellowed and withering under an untiring sun. (Or is it us? Are we the untiring?)

Everything, these days, is a desert.

My throat dries up whenever I speak because sometimes I don’t want you to hear me.

057: the meeting of the worlds. // {water, pt. 2}

At work, when it rains, I wander in a trance. Eyes tethered to the windows as if by strings. Shivering with delight at every rush of downpour, every thundersound.

People ask for more coffee; I stand halfway to the coffee pot, an empty mug hanging idle from my fingertip, and look out into the storm until something, someone, jolts me back to reality.

It’s a crime to look away from the windows.

My whole body aches to run out through those glass doors, dance in it, get soaked to the skin and not care.

But I don’t, for some reason.

056: stories.

Norman Rockwell - Saying Grace (1951)

Stories are appearing again.

Yesterday I pulled a Norman Rockwell book off the shelf. Stopped on the page with Saying Grace.

One moment I looked at a picture. The next there was a story in my head.





//

Some weeks this weird, diaphanous anxiety begins to rise under my skin. It comes and it goes and I get up in the mornings and stare into the mirror and ask, What is wrong with me? and finally, one day, realize that I’m not reading a book right now. And that’s why.

So, yesterday I started reading a new book.*
I feel better.

___________________________________

*The House of Mirth by Edith Wharton, if you want to know. (Thanks to Nancy, whose book recommendations never fail.)

055: I could write about a lot of things

Rain, again—wandering into the cracks in my consciousness, lingering till I give it a name.

Missing dancing so much it hurts, but when I try to go back my limbs touch the walls of this room and the flame dies out in silence.

Worry, a dart, a sickness. A fog over bright moons.

Night, not my friend nor my enemy. I’m immune to it as it is to me. Every 24 hours we meet, play some cards. Whoever wins wins and that’s it till tomorrow, when we start again.

100: some days too much.
Some days not nearly enough.

054: the village.

I am moving to a new town. A new apartment.
An upstairs. A white house. A two-windowed room.

I walked there this evening, wandered among the coloured houses (Cinque Terre…?). Stood before the door I’ll come back to each night starting sometime in the middle of June.

When I looked between the houses, down lane upon lane, I saw ghosts of some place I once lived…passed through…dreamed about. I cannot always tell the difference.

Stood by a pond my voice can reach across. Missed the lake.

I whispered, This’ll have to do.

I think it may.