I spend nights alone, in a hotel room. Sometimes in a cabin in the mountains. The cabin in the mountains, they’ve done up so that it’s covered in deer prints and wolf prints and bear prints and plaid. Enamel crockery. Indoor hanging vines. Big picture window, so I can stand naked and cry before the …
Continue reading The right amount of sadness
The way the calls come late at night, and the way that you don’t sleep. Lie staring at the ceiling; know that you must leave town in the morning. The way you need to buy an apple pie for the drive. Let it sit upon your lap the whole way home. You don’t even like …
You want to rip your hair out, over and over again. You want to tear at it until your mind grows quiet with exhaustion. Until your scalp, with a suddenness now feeling cold and empty, grows tired. You want to cry them back to life, as if your tears have hidden power in their flowing. …
Continue reading Boys don’t cry
An aunt of mine makes quilts, for every generation of the family. When we are young, she shows us ours—the patches for each sibling. I remember being worried that my brother, newly born, did not have a square. Worried he had been forgotten in the weaving all together of a family. I watch the grown …
Continue reading Patchwork Girl
Some people, you can hear the way their heart hurts when they speak. I’ve hit a wall in this exploration of family. I think it comes from the fact of my youth. So many of their memories I can’t remember, which makes me feel like I am not deserving of their story. I am …
It feels strange, to wake up in a world without them. A sudden stark realization that they are, simply put, no longer there. And yet, we transition. This is the work of the mourners—to ease themselves back into life. The men continue on, their emotions dragging them so deeply that they touch the bottom. The …
Continue reading Water Weavers
Like water, the brothers uncles cousins now slip through my fingers. And where they fall is someplace dark. I cannot quite see to the bottom of them. I try to peer through all of their existence at my feet, to grasp at understanding, but my gazing comes up dry. To really understand them, the dead …
Continue reading Hide and Seek
Tonight, I take a bath. Because the drain is broken still, a bath is its own labor. When I am done, I have to haul the water from the tub inside a bucket—trip after trip—until the tub sits empty. I have to weigh the cost. Tonight, it is worth it. Tonight, I take a bath …
The Wild Heart of Life 