"Bone and Hue" by Olivia Clare

There was a young woman

who lived in her shoes.

Bare-backed, she sat

with elders and sheened

her nails with sloe.

Felt purse, trunk,

berries in bottled gin.

Smoke rose

from the purples of the ground.

Moscow maybe next, or

Poland, where the numbers burned.

Purples of the mosses turned.

Some million shades.

Six million more.

Purples of the mosses,

and all the millions, blue.

She had so many lives,

she didn’t know what to do.

Heavy

When I finish reading Heavy I sob in the bathtub until the water turns cold.


I feel so much sorrow for Black pain, for the fact that "my" country is premised on the exploitation and the fervent, mob-ish hatred of Black and Brown bodies and Black and Brown people, that simply because of the color of my skin I am in some ways complicit and in so many ways brutishly empowered. My chest hurts. My stomach hurts. In the words of the small refugee Brown girl interviewed by Valeria Luiselli, it gives me bellysadness.

I am so bellysad.


And I am so inspired to tell the truth.


This, perhaps the only bit of worthwhile feedback extended during 45 minutes of egotistic bullshit: I've been hiding.



He is trying to care better.

Wilson keeps seeking my chest but the cartilage attaching to the bones within my sternum is so inflamed, for 11 days now I have been short of breath and in so much pain, I cannot cuddle the way we normally do in the evenings while I read or write on my back on the couch, but I cannot tell Wilson that and he cannot understand or accept why I cross my arms over my chest each time he draws near. So he holds Wilson on his stomach, so that I won't be hurt by nine more pounds of pressure on my chest, which already feels like a bear is sitting on it, a big round pre-hibernation bear that has been gorging itself for months on mountainside berries.


And here is the lesson again: I have to slow down sometimes. I have to take time to breathe. I have to tell the truth.

"mulberry fields" by Lucille Clifton

they thought the field was wasting

and so they gathered the marker rocks and stones and

piled them into a barn    they say that the rocks were shaped

some of them scratched with triangles and other forms    they

must have been trying to invent some new language they say

the rocks went to build that wall there guarding the manor and

some few were used for the state house

crops refused to grow

i say the stones marked an old tongue and it was called eternity

and pointed toward the river    i say that after that collection

no pillow in the big house dreamed    i say that somewhere under

here moulders one called alice whose great grandson is old now

too and refuses to talk about slavery    i say that at the

masters table only one plate is set for supper    i say no seed

can flourish on this ground once planted then forsaken    wild

berries warm a field of bones

bloom how you must i say

Glissade

So we find ourselves at this impasse: If I tell you the truth you'll ask why I stayed.



I am scared to start again, because things went so poorly the first time.


I have restarted at least one major thing in my life and so far it's contributing to a level of happiness that I haven't felt in a long time



The reason I am going to the mountain every chance that I get is because every time I ski I feel joy. How many activities is this true for: If I do this, I'll be happy


Today by myself I lapped 10 runs while he and she hucked cliffs in the glades. As for me I went faster, and faster, practiced keeping my skis together through the entirety of each turn. Practicing over and over by myself, for the joy of it, for the chance to do the same under more extreme conditions in the backcountry, because I want to do more of it for the rest of my life, at the top of a mountain

Then we skied down to mid-mountain and ate shared lunches brought from home. Then on to the bottom with a quick detour, I sat on the deck and watched the sun and the mountains come out


Something I am doing more and more and it feels good



Hanna is so happy to have her best friend here for a sleepover. I remember so many of them with a bad taste in my mouth



Listen: Fuck 'em. June you've gotta get back into it

Cringefest 2019

Why go back to it? I am writing this from a time when I do not feel scared or harmed or broken. Still I feel that it is necessary to retrieve something, or someone, who was lost there without either of us knowing. You see, I did not exist then, and she did not or could not or would not see.

What she could not see is that lies were not protecting her, but obfuscating herself from herself, acculturating her to lies so that when other people lied to her she could so easily be lied to, because being lied to was normal.

Her mother lied. For a long time, her sister lied, though she doesn't lie so much any more. Her brother didn't lie but he hid himself away, so that she was never exposed to his truthfulness. Her father told the truth until he stopped talking. Many of her partners lied, but not all of them.

The truth is you can spend a whole life lying to yourself and other people. In some ways it's a victory to know it after a few decades instead of all of them. Still it leaves an awful lot of mess, an awful lot of loss, so much regret. That girl who everyone said had so much potential -- did she exist? Can anything built on a foundation of lies have potential? Or does that foundation render the potentiality itself a lie?




I just spent eight years not being myself. Not long before that, it was a decade. I think I have been myself from the ages of 0 to 8, from approximately 22 to 23, and again from around 31 to present. Because this year I am focusing on the gain and not the gap, I will count nearly one third of 32 and a half years as a win. Also there were certain moments when in relationship with certain people that I felt wholly myself.


Remember lying belly-down on the bed laughing? Those moments are about as real as it ever gets.



I love being in school.

I hope to be a teacher.

From "New Year's Day" by Kim Addonizio

Today I want   

to resolve nothing.

I only want to walk

a little longer in the cold

blessing of the rain,   

and lift my face to it.