From "Self-Portrait, 1969" by Frank Bidart

Sick of being decent, he craves another
crash. What reaches him except disaster?

ae366666

That title is Wilson's contribution to this monologue, and far be it from me to erase what little paws have written.


The way the game works is this: If you are caught saying the words, somebody else gets to keep your necklace.


She gave me the jam because she knows how much I like jam. 

Before I eat dinner, I'm gonna eat a little jam appetizer.



There isn't anything to get back to. You just evolve and you leave it all behind and you take everything with you.



People tell me their secrets.

There is a line in my journal that I didn't finish writing. It starts like this: How many times have I sought com


While he makes toast in the toaster oven she is piping it nicely with a little nozzle, a few roses, and then giving it a good blowtorch.


He has put some corn syrup in there. We'll see.


You just gotta wait for these things. You can't rush it.



I am 90 percent sure it is the chockecherry jam.

God, please care for the Earth and all of her creatures.

I eat the banana it is good

The snow boots sit dripping onto the mat. The ski lifts will be open by the end of next week.


I remember going to that post-modern art museum and I remember walking outside of it into the dark, cool night. I remember being surrounded by other people, maybe yellow lines on the black street, maybe crossing the road to access a lit passageway toward the subway. What I cannot remember is where I was, who I was with, or where we were going.


In that D.C. apartment we did shots of vodka and washed them down with diet red bull, disgusting, then I think maybe we took a cab to a burlesque show and I really loved it and also I felt uncomfortable the whole time, albeit not because of the burlesque.


Walking alone in D.C. I went to art museums, sat on windy benches atop professional buildings, gazed down on the river, walked long through the state park, stood tall in front of those charging dogs, had my ass grabbed, was chased while shouting NO, got called at and harassed on a daily basis, disappeared into that crowd of drummers drumming and acrobaters acrobating, hopped on rental bikes and pedaled all over, walked the rich streets of Georgetown, kissed him by that koi pond or rather he kissed me and I said I didn't think he should, reconnected with high school friends, sang in the shower, sang in my bedroom, covered my bedroom walls with pencil drawings, lived on a mattress on the floor, had sex in my room and then in his room, had sex in the basement bedroom, had sex after climbing up the fire escape and shimmying through the bathroom window, crashed a party in a skintight leopard costume, told him I didn't respect him as much and probably never would, ate a lot of falafel, had my boots on, lent that crying young man on the sidewalk my cell phone and gave him a great big hug, handed out sandwiches, granola bars, money to all the homeless people I met, sat in that literary cafe and dreamt, read my writing out loud to my writing group, read my writing out loud at poetry readings, brought him along to a poetry reading, went to the aerospace museum, ate hot dogs, rode the bus to choir practice, committed to memory that image of him sitting on the bench amidst the greenery and the concrete and the graffitied skate park and the water. I auditioned for a choir and I was one of only a handful picked. I wrote and wrote and read it to other people. I walked and walked and walked all over the city and even though it gave me many reasons to be I was not afraid.


You're allowed to have a little fun.



There is still hope left in this world. When did I start being so serious all the time?

Honk if you're lonely tonight*

I don't think I can read any more apocalypse stories.



When I first moved into this basement apartment I was apprehensive about using the two burners sunk into the narrow, poorly constructed countertop on account of the fact that something in them doesn't work quite right; the burners will not light on their own, even though technically that is what they are meant to do. Thus anytime anyone desires to use one or both of the burners they must turn on the gas and put fire to it in the form of a lighter or a match. I was apprehensive about lighting one or both of the gas burners with a lighter or a match because I was a bit worried that I'd blow the whole place up. Consequently for several months I did not use the burners any time I was alone in the apartment; I would use them only on weekends, when he was available to help me light a fire under my scrambled eggs. On the other days I ate most of my meals cold.

At some point, I suppose, I must have forgotten all those nights I cooked on the little gas campstove from the pack on my back.

These days I must be back to remembering. I turn on the gas, jam my fingers between the metal spikes that suspend pots and pans above the flame, and flick the lighter. I put the water on to boil and it is not until several minutes later, when I sit down at this borrowed laptop to write, that I realize I am no longer afraid to light one or both of the burners on my own.


I am making a mug of chamomile tea.

When the water has come to a roiling boil I wrap my shirt sleeve around the pot, lift it from the burner, turn off the gas, and pour the still-boiling water over the tea bag, which swells grotesquely and spasms a little in the water.


Humans boil lobsters alive, and snakes swallow their prey that way too.


Today he waited in line at the post office to retrieve my new book and my flower essences. Supposedly they will help my body heal from the trauma of having snapped my ankle and hopped on one leg 5.5 miles out of the backcountry.

One of the weirdest parts is that it still does not quite feel like my leg, my foot, my ankle. It feels a bit like somebody has sewn a new leg, a new foot, and a new ankle onto the right side of my body while I slept, only the parts aren't all from the same factory and they don't quite go together.

Luckily I have found a woman who is helping me. She travels down into the deepest layers of tissue and invites my body to let go of its clinging so that my leg and my ankle and my foot can return to where they used to be.

I cannot resent my body for getting so out of sorts. It was simply trying to protect me.


I owe that brother and sister and that old wilderness ranger and that smiling golden retriever a great debt of gratitude.



He was going to patch the backside of his pants yesterday, but he didn't do it.


I don't think I have had sex under the covers for going on a decade, if ever.


I am hopeless for you. I melt to a warm, gooey substance seemingly incapable of making major decisions.

Also I am so stubborn. I obsess over this more than anyone I know.


I could look for an ambient tape hiss. 



If...

Then what?!



*with great thanks and admiration for Silver Jews

I don't think I know anyone born in November

Sans serif fonts are in.


The doctor has left the building.


We went to the meadow and it was even more magnificent than expected. How to put words to it: Hanna cozied up in that plaid flannel shirt, chasing through the snow after wherever her legs carried her. Scooping clusters of snowflakes off the tips of overwintering shrubs and blowing them from my fingers with a wish. The sun so powerful I felt its intensity growing from behind massive plumes of cloud. Hiking up to the overlook just as the wind blew the entire snowstorm away to reveal layers of blue and green and white and gray mountains in front of me.


I am reminded of the parable of the sun and the wind, and who could best convince a man to take off his coat. Open up let the light in.


Our lives need fantasies in order not to ruin them.


I am lying wet-haired on the blue flannel sheets in a baggy blue t-shirt and a pair of gray and pink-polka-dotted boxers.

My feet and ankles are still sore but I didn't feel a thing while I was walking. It was simply too beautiful, and too cold.


I watched the temperature drop, counting, and looked up just at the moment that rain changed to snow.


I remember driving alone through those quiet country roads in east prospect, the sun settling over farmland, and feeling for those minutes dialed in to expansiveness and possibility.


What is the guitar not playing. Act one scene twelve.


The drying rack is broken beyond repair. At this point I've spent as much on duct tape as I would on a new drying rack. My laundry bag, also, has ripped to the point that it is hardly functional. Yet I cling to my stubbornness even though I already have not won.


Some days I think Noel has more integrity than any other member of his friend group; other days I think he is lower than dirt. Which is it, Noel.


He reminds me that I contain multitudes and it is exactly what I needed to hear. Sometimes it's simply everything all at the same time.


As usual, the heron chooses this time in the evening to take flight over the closet.


I am going to start painting again. I have my PA license plate tacked up over the doorway into the kitchen.


Though I still do not much care for the taste of regular Coca-Cola, I do concede it is better out of the glass bottle.


And why is your coat hanging in my living room, holding space on that coat rack I picked up more than four years ago for $15 in Queens.


When I went to the library to cancel my membership, they seemed shocked by the idea that anyone would leave.

The rabbit sits, as always, beneath the moonlight and the snow-covered boughs.


My back really aches, so much so that I can barely move it. My back is going to feel better soon.



I'm a different person now.


I trust that there is nothing to get back to.

Once you have felt it do you ever stop feeling it

Once you have felt it do you ever stop feeling it. Do you ever want to.


Sure it's a little daunting but it feels better already, doesn't it?


Do you know that feeling when you're not sure exactly what music you want to listen to, so you pick an album that seems like maybe-kinda-possibly it will fit the bill, or at least won't terribly offend your sensibilities in that moment, and then WHAM! it's exactly what you needed to hear?


Today I danced for three consecutive hours and then (after drinking one of those protein shakes and eating an almond and coconut energy bar and sitting on the outdoor bench for 20 minutes even though it was gray and cold) danced for another three and a half.

This is why my feet are raw and my back is aching, and still my body can't stop moving to this album even as I lie here on the pulled out couch. Once you find the music in you it keeps bubbling up for as long as you don't slam a lid on top.


It used to be that I did not move my arms; now my whole body moves.


I remember walking around that road in my parents' neighborhood vividly, I remember it being a common word in the household growing up, and yet for a moment I can't remem--Crestlyn! 


Yes and walking down the hill to the small woods. And discovering the old ruins and thinking I was the first one. Trying to pretend to myself that I hadn't seen the beer cans or the graffiti. I was nine. I yearned to discover.


The archeologist did not wish to purchase the boots after all. He had not realized they were insulated boots. He is looking for a boot he can wear during the summer, when it is too hot to wear insulated boots.


I can't believe I have a day off tomorrow. It has been so long.


The first night I wore jewelry but today my fingers were naked; my wrists were naked. I wore a flowy tank top over my favorite strappy blue sports bra and my favorite pair of yoga tights and that was it. I didn't even paint my toenails even though I had intended to paint my toenails prior to today, although in retrospect I'm not sure why I had created such an intention in the first place given that I so rarely wear toenail polish. Perhaps it's because I knew my feet would be the focus of so much attention, what with dancing and all.


The carrot mug sits coffee stained on the messy table. Also Hanna's harness and a set of keys.


We are going to do something in 15 minutes.


This music is so pretty I feel like I'm going to explode.

Get bumped

How do you say my name. Everyone pronounces it differently. My parents can't remember who I was supposed to be.


The time for over-thinking is over.



This will be the best part of my day: Walking down the hill with Hanna trotting beside me, the leash looped in her smiling mouth, as a gust of wind blows up from behind and a wave of rustling Aspen leaves overtakes us like a golden river flowing.

And this: Whirling and twirling to the rhythm of my feet until I lost myself, until I found myself.


What I remembered is that I am safe when I am in me. What I remembered is that I still know how to be free.




Tomorrow I had planned to take Hanna for a long walk in the meadow above 10,000 feet, but the bottoms of my feet are raw and my ankles stiff and maybe even a little bit swollen after a bath. We shall have to wait and see.



I appreciate your honesty.


For a late-night snack I am tipping my neck back and pouring frozen fruit from my water glass into the back of my throat. I catch a strawberry between my molars and pause, letting my breath melt the thin layer of ice still coating its skin. I chew it lightly and swallow.




This song was unexpecting.

I remember running up the long incline past my high school, so far removed, finally, that it hardly feels like it was me who used to be trapped behind those walls.


You just keep peaking and peaking.


I think I helped them feel good with my offering. I think they were smiling at me because I was beautiful.




What I remembered is to keep moving.


I mean really sit and think about it!

Jesus, don't cry

For most of my life I have lived a very solitary existence surrounded by family and friends.



This will be the best part of my day: Ten a.m., standing at the trailhead, I tell Hanna to sit, unclip her leash, and then administer her favorite command: Go play. She takes off down the trail in front of me, then bounds with great determination into the scrubby sage beside the barbed wire fence--as if she has known all her life exactly when and where to orchestrate this departure. Suddenly, a loud sound emits from the construction equipment in the distance. She pauses, nervous, and scoots back to the trail, where she waits until I have caught up to and stepped in front of her. She has gotten so much braver over these past seven months, but she would still like me to lead the way when things become scary or unfamiliar. I oblige, boots striding out over the dirt beneath my feet--because I can do that again now, on my ankle's best days, striding--and make my way past the chicken coop. I turn to watch her staring up at a noisy crow perched accusingly on the telephone pole above her. She is trying to make sense of it. She notices me watching and charges to my side for praise and treats. We continue onward down the trail, her hop scotching through the sagebrush behind me and me looking forward, listening for the jangle of tags that lets me know she's not far from my side.


So many small holes on the bottom of my flip flop, the result of Wilson venting his frustrations. He resents very much that Hanna gets to go outside all the time, whenever she wants to, and he does not.


I am trying to make this a normal day, although it takes me a whole cup of coffee (more coffee than I usually drink) to feel like I can converse successfully--which is to say, convincingly--with all the people who come up to say hi to me at the coffee shop. They ask me how I am and I want to tell them, Today I am feeling really desperately hurt and sad, but people don't come to the coffee shop for heartbreak.

When I drive home for lunch is when it hits me again, weeping into my salad such that I can no longer eat. After last night things cannot be the same. 


I get myself back together again, hand over my mouth. When the computer screen turns black I am startled by the sadness in my own eyes looking back at me.

Do you want to buy a house in Colorado

Do you want to buy a house in Colorado I am looking for someone to split the mortgage, cooking, maybe some sex or cuddling on top of the unmade bed if we get lonely. It doesn't need to be anything fancy; a cabin will do--a log one, preferably--most especially if it has a wooden porch with a rickety rocking chair and is surrounded by trees.


I am not supposed to run as much as I ran tonight I couldn't help myself. Four miles and yes it hurt a bit but here is the thing if I hadn't run that far I would not have been able to listen to the song that made me cry twice back to back; listen to nearly the entirety of that old favorite album of mine; stare up at the giant snow-capped peaks bobbing along to my steps; stop by my favorite creek spot and let the sound of moving water rush over me; turn around from the creekbed to see the sunset clouds like a glass of spilled orange juice seeping across the sky.



What happens when you change your behavior, she says, is that you change the dance. And that means everything has to change.


Well I have changed my behavior and everything is changing. I had not penciled in on my calendar that everything would change on the late afternoon and early evening of Wednesday, November 1, and consequently I am not sure I have time for this.

I am certainly not prepared from an emotional standpoint. 

That isn't necessarily true. Secretly I think I have been preparing for a good long while.





Sign the petition sign the petition sign the petition sign THIS petition sign and sign and sign and petition and petition and petition

How much energy could be saved if assholes didn't run the world. If we all agreed that taking care of each other and the Earth is worthwhile.

That we cannot agree on this makes me want to abdicate my title as a member of the human race. Better to be a wolf, or a bumblebee, or a great blue heron rising up out of the water.

Of course, tell that to the hare, the stung child, and the silver fishes.



For more than six years now the pain has been hitching a ride like a baby kangaroo in its hidden pouch. For more than six years now I have carried it quietly with me wherever I go. I am ready to put it down, now, the only thing holding me back being what kind of mother leaves her child in a ditch on the side of the road.

Then again I never asked to be a mother. Having a uterus doesn't make me one. I will be, maybe, if and when I'm good and ready, and even then it will have more to do with taking in a child somebody else couldn't or wouldn't love than it will to do with my uterus. She's been through enough.

The point, of course, is that I am hurting quite badly.



Do you want to buy a house in Colorado? I am wishing to buy a house in Colorado.

From "Triolet on a Line Apocryphally Attributed to Martin Luther" by A. E. Stallings

Why should the Devil get all the good tunes

why are sign and the gift of why you what book

They clanked steins and his dad said something sexual about me I have tried to forget it.

The mustard is tipped upside down beside the new bottle of sriracha.

I wonder if he ever made it back to Haiti.



The soft animal of my body wants the soft animal of his body.

Yet we walk around hard so much of the time.


I see it and I am choosing to ignore it.

Not much gets past me, Sherlock.


I have eaten the grapefruit and the gluten-free crackers.

I have remembered climbing up through those green aspen trails.


In late spring we traveled to Moab, Capitol Reef, Pink Coral Sand Dunes, the Grand Canyon, the reservation, Mesa Verde, Telluride, and that scorched desert trail not far from the Palisades. I love this country, the land of it. I love sleeping in a tent night after night and living out of a cooler and a duffel in the trunk of the car.




I have decided I will be returning to Pennsylvania, if only for a week; too many days away from the mountains she will be gasping for air.


Crepuscular

Romanesco

mustard green jacket with red and white flannel lining

flying squirrels, industrial bridge, two egrets standing in blue water




We will not be seeing them for Thanksgiving I am sad about it.

He is going to find somewhere to volunteer. I am going to drive back across the country with my best friend. We will sleep in tents under dark southern skies as we did when we were 17 barefoot and dirty in Tennessee and again when we traveled to Washington to see him and then recovered from our mosquito bites by shopping for hand-thrown pottery in Arkansas


Now I am contorted uncomfortable over the loveseat listening to the Talking Heads.


I did not become the ice dancer instead I taught quiet yoga class, drove home past clusters of masked hooligans, hugged my dog and kissed the soft orange head of my cat, watched a few episodes of Bob's Burgers, ate a dinner of kale, broccoli, onion, red potatoes, and peach jerk sausage, read a little, ate the grapefruit, and then picked up the laptop to write. I suppose I am either growing into myself or becoming far too insular. I think the former, he said and I realized how rarely the former is emphasized over the latter.



Wilson has moved onto my chest and liquefied there, his face disappearing beneath my right boob.

I have been experimenting and I think it's more than placebo; I think those clear and mossy green beads are really onto something. 


Oh I am so excited at the prospect of seeing my friends.

I remember running together through those sketchy research trails behind the college baseball fields; on the dusty trails beloved by local mountain bikers; through the dense foliage of the state and county parks

Too many of my supposed friends have tried to kiss me and become enraged when I said no.

I remember bending over to retrieve the railroad spike in that run-down town in northern Maine. I am homesick for it.

Tomorrow I must commit to deep breathing.



I purchased the smallest canvases I could find and I painted each of them a different ratio of yellow mixed into purple and purple mixed into yellow.