Two syllables
summing up the hole in me.
Fleece pretense
thrown over my shoulders
much too heavy, much too
warm.
A flashlight,
blindfold,
a shell I found in Korea, nowhere
near the sea.
A hatred
of all things solid,
sturdy like wood.
A Mason jar of river water
stolen from her belly
April 15th, 1996.
—————-
Inspired by Tim O’Brien’s The Things They Carried.
What about you? What do you carry? Feel free to be poetic or literal. I like both.
Stories I said I had. Tangential stories and life-changing ones.
Until today I haven’t known where, exactly, to begin. And so quiet this space has mostly been because some beginnings are tricky. Sometimes it’s quite impossible to denote where something ended and something else entirely began.
I’m not going to be able to tell you everything, but then the best stories never really do, do they?
(That’s not a trick question. I promise they don’t.)
(Unless the story was penned by Henry James, in → Read more...
This week I’ve been finding pieces of writing long lost and forgotten. Unearthing words belonging to me, and words penned by some of my favorite of all literary voices, collected and saved and scrawled excitedly on pages littered with foggy memories of past lives, obscured now in light of all that was and is and is to come.
Of the words not belonging to me, Lucille Clifton’s were the ones I found most often, recounted in notebook after notebook, or inked → Read more...
They say water changes stone, carving it over time to angles and dimensions in harmony with water’s need to reach the sea; but sometimes, stones change the watercourse instead.
-The lovely and eclectic Shari
I’m collecting my favorite corners, like the one with the stunning oak tree on display for an entire neighborhood to see, its limbs shading a bustling crosswalk shooting confidence into pedestrians like electric currents of white light, fresh graffiti on a nearby curb: an infinity symbol, black and simple.
I’m collecting stories about the apartment window filled with small elephant figurines along one of my favorite walking routes. So many trunks standing side-by-side and none of them alive.
I’m collecting the surprisingly → Read more...