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 …
I try to think back on when I first fell in love with water—fell in love with storms. I think it was, perhaps, the whimsey that my father breathed into the lore—the way he made rain seem like magic. How he never made us come inside once it’d begun. With water, I have a strange …
Sometimes, I imagine what it must be like to be buried underground. When I miss my cousin terribly, I think about rolling back the grave grass like a carpet. Like a blanket, or a sheet. I could unbury him, and watch the ground unfurl. When I was little, I was captured by the story of …
Continue reading The Graveyard
I used to twist my words until they told stories I had never heard before. Too forgiving, other people used to say. A woman— Maintaining imagery, An object to be viewed. I know how to blame myself And how to polish the same wineglass till it sparkles— Till it shatters in the hand. I remember …
Continue reading worth: a memory
We are on fire out here, again. The wind, despite how I may love her, is cruel. And yet, the presence of her here is electrifying. My hair tingles at the places where it meets my scalp. Before, I am asleep. Now, I am suddenly awake. At the group meeting, we sit in a circle. …
My cousin told me once that when she was trying to quit smoking, she buried her tobacco. She walked all along down the beach until she found a place within the sand and she buried it. If I remember right, she rolled one last cigarette before she nested the loose shreds of leaves into the …
Do you know how many novels I have authored in my head? I walk around in circles with imaginary words. Sometimes the words are so loud I climb beneath the covers and I scream. Sometimes I eat them. Take a corner of an m and gnaw and gnaw like dogs with bones. Sometimes I light …
Render. What is this body I have made? How strange, this physicality of self. The things I have become, and all of those I haven’t. Sometimes, when my eyes are not quite working right, I look like someone else inside the mirror. Unfamiliar. Foreign. I wonder if my mother would still know me—but, of course, …
The Wild Heart of Life 