My god lives here in the darkness, in the snow, in buckets of sap, the soul of the trees, flowing by the freeze and thaw of howling night and gentle day, like me, learning to flow with ice in my lungs and hot sugar crystals glazing my wind-ravaged cheeks. On split lips, I taste something elemental. Pine needles, cold. The sweat of the mountain. The proximity to the fire and boil that […]
Category: My Story
The second boy who loved me
The second time a boy told me he loved me I was 13.“I love u,” my phone buzzed, my head buzzed, New feelings, no end. “Love u 2,” I responded, deciding just then. Said perhaps because a reject’s a punch or that the words “Facebook official” gave me someone at lunch to sit near, knees touching, electrically aware. And there, we held hands sometimes, […]
April 4, 2015
Alternately titled: journal of a girl who has yet to find her way I don’t want to have already experienced the last good day. I can feel the sadness seeping into these words I’m scribbling on this page, so, in the following pages because I have nowhere to be but with you we will sit down […]
Frohes Neues Jahr
Cold at bay with bottom shelf bourbon cobblestone streets shine bright as day as the first fireworks erupt on the horizon and the second fireworks sizzle against the neighbor’s windowpane. Die Frau ducks under the smoke, under the frantic clamor of church bells marking midnight to clink whiskey bottle to wine glass. Frohes Neues Jahr!
I’ll catch you
It’s only a mile down the road, you said, you were wrong, five miles later in that summer sun, turned around twice, footpaths veering downhill, that can’t be right, I’m sorry, you said,let’s try again– When we left the house that morning I’d asked what to wear– you said I’d be fine in that blue dress I liked so long it sweeps my feet, you were wrong, legs […]
At the dinner table
I have an answer but like I really don’t know what my plans are, thanks for asking, but also, like, if I paid attention to myself for half a minute I would discover I do know the answer but what I want feels impossible because we’re all so deluded by this idea that what you do as in your work is the most important thing about you and not what you […]
Hairpin Turn
That last night we drove together the music so loud and your face so dim in the darkness while the rain blurred all your edges– I watched you, half-dissolved already, a distant planet, glow with celestial magic that might suspend time as everything sped away.
A Year Ago
I called out of work sick again. Not sick really, but there are no words for feeling a danger signal where there is none. Dissatisfaction? Disquiet? An itchy paint plastered to my smile cracking in the corners like a sob. “What is it with you?” “It’s always something with you.” Poised on the threshold between coming and going inching toward the door inching toward the […]
In a flash
Rain splashed the light of the U-Haul sign like a bucket of paint across the windshield the night my sister was born. My first memory eased into being. The neon ghost and gone again. In the darkness and rumble, I fumbled for my mental camera, barely in focus, click–flash–The moment whizzed past.
Why did you ever think dead girls could fly?
You look like a bird with that down on your wings, pretty girl, but you’re too weak to fly, so what did you hollow out your bones for? Happy, pretty girls don’t burn holes in their sharp, happy, pretty hips to break free from the skin they’re in. Strong, happy girls don’t cry when they realize there are calories in toothpaste. […]