You can tell I’m nervous when I don’t shut up, when I turn into a chatterbox that will do or say anything to avoid having to do or say what has to be done or said. I am not brave. I am not fearless. I am not even casual, ever, it’s always all or nothing for me, this or that.
But when it comes to you I’m able to slow down. Really, I have no choice. Your skin against mine creates a still silence that comes from nowhere else, only you, you soft mouse.
No one will hear you unless … Read the rest
When you were younger you read that Robert Frost poem like everyone else in school and spent years dreaming of that point in your life where two paths finally diverge. All those years you spent trudging down that pin-straight road, fretful for the future, trying not to detour into the thick woods like the thickheaded people who think they know better.
You keep your eyes forward and back straight, plodding along as more and more people fall by the wayside or disappear into the forest, and you can feel it when you’re finally alone, when there’s nothing but you and … Read the rest
It’s been twenty-five years since you’ve stood with your friends singing Hallelujah on a stage, feeling the vibration of a hundred voices lifting from the platform to the sky. It’s been twenty years since you listened to that same song on the way to your friend’s funeral. He’d shot himself to death at work. What a life. Now you can’t listen to that song without crying and you will always wonder how you couldn’t have seen it coming, and why no one ever usually sees it coming. There should be a prescription everyone gets at birth, an RX for love … Read the rest
it wasn’t the argument that ended things for you,
the one you held on to and wrote about, the one
you felt was so demeaning and mean —
it was a simple question — and you wanted to give a
simple, honest answer
that’s it
that’s all
you didn’t know what would happen
you didn’t even know what you wanted
to happen, but you lit the fuse that
would eventually blast you
to smithereens
boom
poof
and all these years later we are both
asking what the hell were you thinking
to do things like that, to do everything
the … Read the rest
In this relationship I have to be flexible,
I need to always be ready to bend if necessary,
and to make myself small and quiet
whenever I am asked.
One of the prices I pay for this relationship
is silence, my silence, my starvation for
affection and validation, and any
conceivable hope for the future.
Those I must pay for
one way or another.
One day, or not.
In this relationship I have to be ready for
cliff diving, train jumping, backflips, I
need to be prepared for the quick exits,
I always need to be ready to run.
I … Read the rest
In approximately eight and a half months I am going to be going on a six day, five night writing “retreat” all alone, and this will be the first time in my life I’ve had the opportunity to do anything like this.
My favorite living writer has a tiny house / AirB&B on per property that she is offering to writers and artists as a place to visit, relax, and I suppose most importantly of all, to create, and to create in solitude.
I love being alone.
I love being with friends and family, too, but I am definitely … Read the rest
I thought we were okay.
I was running on autopilot,
that I can admit,
but I know I was here,
present, conscious,
I know I felt loved even if
I felt it a little bit less.
I told myself “Sometimes,
it can’t always be 50/50,
sometimes one person needs
to offer the other more when
their well is running dry.”
So I offered you more.
I offered to give up my peace
so that you could have yours
for a while, and apparently,
that wasn’t enough.
You caught me last night,
deer-in-headlights I sat and
listened to all the things… Read the rest
there are so many months between me and here and there
but I can’t wait to prepare. I can’t wait to go from wistful dreaming
to actual planning, to opening a duffle bag and beginning to pack.
Clothes and deodorant and soap, various and sundry things to fill
the space in me (the bag) just like where I’m going will fill the space in me.
a whole entire winter and spring need to pass before this chance comes
and I have to remind myself it’s still a chance, anything can happen
in that amount of time. illness, death, job loss, … Read the rest
