sometimes i think if i tapped into it and didn’t let go it would overrun
e v e r y t h i n g
Category Archives: words
Silence. Break it. I
silence. break it.
she sits around and twiddles her thumbs. she sits around and twiddles her thumbs. she sits around and thinks of the affair and wonders if she ever smelled her off him, some rank smell that escaped her noticed but was there mocking her and sitting in her chair scratching her thumbs she wonders if she’s smelling it now as he comes through the door after the rain, sopping wet from her, no-
she doesn’t sit around. she doesn’t sit around waiting for him. he’s waiting for her. long days engrossed with the children, the house, the bills, the mortgage, the car he never drives because she’s always taking it to work and leaving him stranded with all this responsibility. it was sensible, he was sensible. they got by on her alone. her alone and they were getting by with him alone and the children alone and the stray cat that crossed the street in the lonely night looking for vermin, no-
silence. break it.
Six months
Six months into the new year, where did it go? She abounds, cuddles closer to me each day. The boy is unsure but smiles nonetheless. Slowly my love forgets. She says the stars are like pinnacles og greatness that have long died and all we see is a legacy we can only imagine.
And I wonder what will provide a reprieve from a checkered history and an unrelenting future.
not a noose
you’d think it would be easy to end one life and start another. spirals at best. the circumlocutions, the twisting helix, a series of splits and joints and bridges. gone today, here tomorrow. the weave is tighter as the years go. love, family, a handful of friends. even if a handful at that. not a noose, but rather the strength of laced twine.
I dread
The dark days, when the chill begins to set in and never leaves you. When everything around you begins to die and wither and molt. When you find yourself sleepless because the night has arrived much sooner than you wanted and lingers long past the morning.
Always, always, a love of the sun and missing it desperately.
when i taught
the brief time that i taught. the first class was something else. the second i barely remember, literally a blur. the third (or was that the fourth) was a disaster but more memorable than the previous. it was a large class and in many ways it failed. but i think i did something different there and maybe i took on too much. to connect the personal with the global, to connect the power of writing as somehow being intrinsic to the immediate as opposed to the historical. this is not to say that writing does not outlive us, nor that it shouldn’t, but rather that writing at the moment should not be for the purposes of fame. that fame was something else entirely, that there were structures at play that affected what ended up in the bookstores and what ended up in the trash.
always the personal over everything else, even when it is the product of the political.
You want to be
Because in the end you want to be found, you want the limelight, you want the glory.
You want all the people who had abandoned you to realize what they had lost, you want to be redeemed by fame.
But that is the key thing here: redemption. You are looking to be redeemed, to be found worthy.
And ultimately, you are not.
I take pictures
I take pictures:
The man from the suv rummaging through my recycling bin
Her quiet disappointment when I turn away from the children
The strand of gray hair looped over my ear
I take pictures:
My daughter’s boredom perched in front of the tv set
My son’s anger as I lock the door behind me
My mother’s face as I tell her I no longer believe in god
I take pictures everywhere I go and everything I left
An over ripe
An over ripe plum clamp between teeth shiny but old. Should I do this? The disappointment all over again, the hushed silence, from the gut, from an incomprehension. I’d sell it all off for a measure of comfort, a moment of absolute stillness. But it moves, jaws work forward and backward, it’s easy until the core, where it’s all gnashing and unforgiveness.
Mother's day
You’ve heard time and again, that you are a wonderful mother. And it’s obvious, the children adore you, they hound you, clamor around you for affection and attention.
But you are not only the mother of children. They are not the only thing you have given birth to and have nutured. I look at our life, at our house, the things we have seen, accumulated, and enjoyed. I look at the span of time, the stretch of years between now and the time your casual gait across a room changed our lives forever.
You gave birth to all of this, to us. You have cared for us and nutured us and tended to us with such care and grace. While I tore down walls only to put up new ones, you fed and cleaned the soul of this marriage, you tended to my wounds at the cost of yours.
Like any loving mother, you’ve put your children before everything else. You’ve made love the organizing principle of our lives. You’ve made us into a family that can withstand anything.