September 2011
1 post
October 2010
1 post
May 2009
12 posts
one year of fifty words
Thanks for reading.
the letters
These are for you, she said. Give them back to me when you mean it. They were my letters to her, wrapped in a pink ribbon, penned in medium black ink, written over weeks that turned months. Hopelessly devoted, they said. But never doubt, they said.
I still have them.
that's me
I wander. I click and clack. I breathe black smoke. I carry the sun and I carry the moon. We run through forests and we run through valleys and part for tunnels long and bright. That familiar humming in the night, that sonorous whistle breaking morning, that’s me. That’s me.
try again
Sometimes, when I close my eyes, I see your face. I see your blue eyes and blushing cheeks and puckered lips, drawn by the brush of memories, daubed by the finger of God, brightly brokenhearted, soft and feminine and delicate. Baby, I wish we could try again.
I’d try again.
the face
Every face tells a story, he said to us. When we walked on the streets that day we saw them, in the old man standing outside the coffee shop, in the young woman sitting in the park, in each other’s faces when we came home after a long fruitless day.
the comet
Every hundred fifty years I come for you in dashing gold and blue. Hello, I say, from my shroud of stars, raining light. Hello, you say, waving a handkerchief, white with lace, trimmed with tears. When I finally burst over the mountains frosting the horizon, we do not say goodbye.
the cheer
He’d always been so ungrateful: sour when snow glittered overhead, rueful when rain whispered soft behind him, cross when clouds galloped across the perpetual pastures of sky, and weary even when the wind carried leaves in lines of color, a signature of cheer to another glorious day on planet earth.
last words
These are the last words. Time will turn them to fossils of left-justified Georgia, but the old ghosts will remain to haunt me with memories remembered and dreams dreamed and hopes hoped. We are encouraged to shine on.
Besides, you have your own pictures in words, and mine cannot compare.
there was
There was that fall on the ice, his jeans torn and leg bleeding. There was that spring, bright and blooming, when she told him she was getting married. There was the accident, a dash of tire marks, metal crumpled like paper, Death watching amused from the shadow of the overpass.
the note
There it lay, tucked shyly between a bagged egg salad sandwich and a juice box fresh with condensation. The note waved stilly at him, a flag of surrender, of peace, or both. Between bites of banana and dollops of pudding, he ruminated on Abraham Lincoln’s angel mother, and his own.
she was beautiful
She was beautiful, and not the kind you see in movies, features glowing in soft focus, soundtrack streaming serenely. She was beautiful, and not the kind you see in magazines, beaming from the rack with shining eyes, caught between glossy images of unshaven men and overpriced purses. She was beautiful.
brawley
Brawley wears a gold helmet and a black leather bomber’s jacket. 42, it says on the sleeve, with arrows. There’s times he’s been and there’s times he’s being and there’s times he’s going to be. When he takes off his mask, which he’ll never do, you’ll see what I mean.
cellar door
Unlike Shakespeare claimed of himself, he was born under a rhyming planet. He tied the words off in knots, like a cherry stem under his tongue, lolling out from teeth to palate and back again, like an arrow shot through branches reaching sky, like the words cellar door. Cellar door.
April 2009
22 posts
stars
What if there were only a handful of places left in the whole world where you could look up, and see the stars, and not just a lightly salted bread of night, but a whole beach of stars, enough to be buried in, enough to build castles in the sky.
1982
The circumstances of my birth were anything but exceptional. It was early morning, just a slip of light sneaking around the shadows, making the blinds glow. It was 1982, so I’ll let you imagine the clothes people were wearing. The rain was a quiet sprinkling overhead. They named me Ben.
the days
The days were lived out in fear, eggshells walked on, voices in whisper, eyes fast to the ground. When the lights moved with morning, they would pretend to walk in the sun and carry their kids to the car and dance to the old tunes, like before the darkness came.
like his grandfather
He had blue eyes, like his grandfather, so they named him Henry. He wouldn’t be here long, but they couldn’t have known. When the rains fell, and they were wet with grief and tired with tears, he made them happy again just in the remembering of him. Like his grandfather.
sometimes the dreams
We are always having the dreams. Sometimes they are black and white and still. Sometimes they are Technicolor and sad. Sometimes they are places we have not yet been and will not go. Sometimes we do not remember their most important parts. Sometimes we do not remember them at all.
marooned
The water was glass, the sand was cocoa, and the trees were paper-mâché, leaves flapping whimsically in a breeze of breath. There was a man and a woman there too, arms akimbo, a fire of toothpicks and candy corn raging between them, looking awfully happy for a little girl’s diorama.
watched
He watched the grass bend in the wind. She watched the mountains stand against the sun. He watched the water run through the fields. She watched the children dance on the stones. He watched her play the piano. She watched him love her again. He watched her love him again.
the sun
Summer, you healed me. Your warmth coaxed me from winter and your breeze dried my tears. Your grass stopped my fall and your dog days licked clean my wounds. And the sun, that glorious globe of glowing, that heavy ornament of heaven, that blinding blot of gold, rose rosy again.
like you see ghosts
He saw her like you see ghosts, though she was still alive. Here she was in his room, on his bed, in her wedding dress. Here she was in his folks’ sun-filled living room, asleep on the couch. Here she was waiting under a tree at their favorite secret park.
the grave
He tried to sleep; it was certainly dark enough. Every now and then, between moments that could have been minutes or years, he heard muffled voices and strained to listen. For a long while they cried, but now they came and laughed too, laughed and left flowers he couldn’t see.
I see you, moon
I see you by day, like God’s faded thumbprint on a cobalt canvas, like a half-closed eye afraid to look, like a holy teardrop dropping. I see you by night, like a giant-sized snowflake, like a silver dollar on black paper, like the top of a stone in dark water.
the proof
He added a variable of fear, divided the days of sadness, squared the promises and fractioned the false pretenses against factors both imaginary and transcendental, now combining the axioms, splitting the constructions, hoping against hope that the proof of his love for her was in this madness of terrible numbers.
the order
He ordered liquid precipitation with a touch of virga, the better to see the sanguine sunset by, and a pH of 6, the better to stand under with mouth open in thirsty wonder, and an abundance of petrichor, the better to smell in sweet longing as it deliquesced into dusk.
the granted
There were some things he might never take for granted again, like dancing in the kitchen, like talking past small, like holding his breath for shooting stars amid stars. If he could have them just one more time, for one more moment, he might never take them for granted again.
long goodbyes
She loved them long, wrapped in arms, at the edge of places you wait for endings and beginnings to end and begin: the top of airport escalators, while planes roared to takeoffs and landings, under signs where buses hissed startings and stoppings, and in dreams, weaved through sleep and waking.
tonight
Tonight is not like any other night. Yes, I will meet you there, with a white rose on the seat and a note in my hand. And when I turn the last corner at the hill to your heart, perhaps my good omen will run by, and wish me luck.
put
I put this road here, painted in charcoals, disappearing in darkness at both ends like a snake in tall grass. I put trees along both sides, compassed with city streetlights, glowing in fog. And then, darling, I put you, driving alone, your dash a carousel of light under arabesque branches.
enough
He kept his heart back for some time, content to give her just an ear, a foot, a mouth. After she whispered sweetly enough, and walked with him far enough, and kissed him quite enough, he’d hand his heart over, trussed in tissue, beating blood, good as yours, fair enough.
the heat
It’s a spectral kind of heat that follows orange on yellow, like layers of a sunshine cake, look but don’t touch (there’s danger here). If we’re lucky, the rain protects us with a wall of water we can hide behind and we whistle in the dark, except it’s light out.
i am the storms
I am the storms. I am the scroll of dirty gray sky, the wind throwing leaves and scattering shingles, the pinpricks of rain’s first small drops. I am the wink of lightning through city buildings, the growl of thunder low in the fields, the final flourish of sweet suffocating snow.
hole too small
Look at him in his black shirt and russet skin, so unsuspecting, so almost-happy. And you see there’s a place in his future he’ll have to go, like being forced through a hole too small, and you can’t wait to see him on the other side, so unsuspecting, so really-happy.
March 2009
22 posts
loved me more
Whenever I can tell you’re lying, whenever you look at me with that face, whenever you leave your hands cold in your lap, I compare you, heartlessly, wrongfully, to those who came before, now a bevy of beauties who surely loved me more than you do, though they did not.
first impression
She sat like a queen, spoke like a senator, moved like she played lacrosse all her years. He would perhaps stumble or joke too quickly or laugh too loudly and the moment would be lost. What did they always say? You only have one chance to make a first impression.
that song
When he played that song, no matter where he was, no matter what he was doing, no matter what the clouds looked like, or how the stars sparkled, or how the girls looked at him, or what the sun appeared as—now a giant pink dew drop—he was happy.
the old suit
The suit soaked in the rain, its pockets filling, its kerchief floating out the fold, its buttons shining wet and new. Now the clouds cleared and the sun baked it dry, leaving its colors faded, its cuffs wrinkled, its lapels drooping lugubriously, just the way it was before it rained.
to sit
There wasn’t anything to do now but sit, so sit he did. The sun walked up the blue dome of sky and sent the moon out behind him, the moon with his face now grimacing, now grinning, now solemn and still, the moon with a train of glitter in stars.
the lights
There was that dim light, that pale yellow spill from the end of a bulb with a blue straw hat. There was that bright white light of mornings in the kitchen window, the first day of school. And there was that light you could see dark in, dull and gray.
the baby
Hello baby, baby with jewel-blue eyes, like all babies born new, hello. Hello there, you. We’ll wrap you up and rock you softly, ‘till sleeping sweetly, safe as houses, we’ll window watch for your good morning. We’ll call you baby and you’ll coo hello, hello, you’ll coo, like babies do.
the cry
It had been a long time in coming, like the swollen soot clouds of a coming storm, like the too-ripe fruit ready to fall, like the sun baking chocolate dirt desperate to bloom. So she let it come, the slow wet rising reaching her eyes, beginning to fall and fall.
the reckoning
I found the card by the window and the suitcase by the door. I found the number in your handwriting, the picture in your drawer, the charm in your front coat pocket. I found the whispers in your ear, the kisses on your lips, the long looks in your eyes.
the good boy
He’s a good boy. He wears the footed pajamas his mother made, blue with a red collar, like Superman maybe. He plays the piano while his Grandma listens over the phone from Wyoming. He plays four square with the neighbor girl, he calls his mother “mother,” and he never lies.
time machine
We saw Christmas, 1987.
Dad was wearing big glasses. Mom had bangs. Laura wasn’t there, not yet. There was us boys though, in miniature faces and fingers, earnest and giggling and innocent. Grandpa was alive again, telling tales about summers in Ecuador. We watched in wonder until the tape stopped.
left
He left a note for his folks, a poem for his girl, a photo for his friends. He pointed his rusted hood ornament east and drove, drove until the mountains flattened into fields, until the sun burst into moon, until the needle was curled up against the “E,” fast asleep.
alright
Maybe he’d be alright. Maybe there was a happy ending yet to be written. Maybe Kate and Jack would end up together in season six. Maybe alone didn’t mean lonely. Maybe it would start raining in sheets and never let up. Maybe God would forgive him. Maybe He already had.
the dog and the ghost
They wrestled in a spotlight of moon, under a conifer, between the hills of the field. One would parry and make to retreat, the other would thrust and dash to strike. The snow broke under the feet of the one, and the air wrinkled at the breath of the other.