I see her almost everyday, walking briskly from a bustling downtown square, headed slightly west, her coffee in her left hand, a portfolio in her right. Sometimes she has an umbrella, but most of the time she is nearly running, seemingly almost to her destination, head down, eyes focused on not tripping nor slowing her stride. Even on the coldest days she is never wearing a jacket.
Three men at the bus stop, looking jovial and yet tired, jackets tattered and eyes squinted against the wind and rain, the three of them huddled closely together underneath an awning just large enough to keep their heads mostly dry. One man is taller than his two companions. As I walk by he looks at me and finishes rolling a joint.
He is the highlight of the holiday excursion. Seasoned joy mixed with a hardened face and a microphone. Singing boisterously with his portable karaoke machine, his face in permanent grin and his voice echoing in and out of the max lines, his enthusiasm for caroling instantly infects the myriad souls wandering past on the sidewalk; his festive spirit allows no one to pass unscathed. We meet eyes as I’m watching through a nearby window. He nods his head, smiles, and continues singing “I’m Dreaming of a White Christmas.”
A mother and daughter sitting across the aisle from one another on the train, cell phones blazing, voices loud enough for everyone within a ten-seat radius to hear. The daughter is writing a poem. She flicks her wrist and flings the paper at her mother as she’s getting ready to answer another call. I catch the first line as she’s shoving her stanzas into her mother’s already occupied hands. “Fuck love” is etched messily and boldly across the top of the page.
Raindrops drip, drip, drip, dropping on an umbrella that is just big enough to cover my shoulders, but cares nothing about shielding my feet and legs from puddles that have formed on every corner, on every street. The sound is soothing, and yet my slacks are tired of being soggy, my hair annoyed by the perpetual wind-blown look it has been forced to accept. I don’t mind walking; my mind is clear when I walk. Sometimes I count. Sometimes I count blessings. Sometimes I count the idiotic sentences I’ve uttered throughout my life. While writing a grocery list in my head, I momentarily lose my right foot in brown water while attempting to ford a flooded corner three blocks from home.
It was here, while waiting for my brother, that I started this story, although, of course, at the time I did not know that stories of life are often more like rivers than books. But I knew a story had begun, perhaps long ago near the sound of water. And I sensed that ahead I would meet something that would never erode so there would be a sharp turn, deep circles, a deposit, and quietness.
-from A River Runs Through It → Read more...
I posted a picture of him for a silly Instagram-related game and found him waiting for me in my dreams, something which occurs so rarely it still explodes solidly-constructed dams inside me each time I see his face, mustached and smiling at mine just the way he always did, just the way I always remember him. As usual he didn’t say much, not anything I could hear or remember, but he was there and I knew it, and when I → Read more...
I have words washed out to sea. Words ushered quietly from my lips to my fingertips, waiting patiently for the right tide, for the moon to bring my stories alive.
I have words being reviewed, words accepted and words rejected, and I’m clinging to my favorite lines, fighting for them, and it feels strange and new and exhilaratingly infuriating, this tug-of-war of wills and how the slightest bit of caving can make me feel like I’m flirting with abandoning the sanctity → Read more...
[Alternately titled: Story, The Second: The Girl Who Moved To Washington State]
It began simply. A direct message on Twitter first, followed by texts; those texts, in turn, begat plans. With those plans came anxiety and apprehension – I didn’t know you, not your face or your voice or anything else, and I wasn’t sure I was ready to – but also something exciting, a strange and unexpected hope hovering quietly on the horizon. And then we met, conversed and laughed → Read more...