making something

Drawing, painting: I watch it happen; I clean up after it; I exclaim over it; I tape it to all the walls in my house; I recycle some of it (in secret). But I do not draw myself, as a rule. I've never been any good at it. I'd like to externalize onto a visual plane but -- well, what I remember about painting is this:

On a roof in a South Carolina spring, I dip my brush into the absurd purple paint and it saturates each fiber, bubbling and thick. No one else is around right now. I press the brush against the wood and drag it left. It's a dry feeling. The wood wants the color, eats it right up, asks for seconds, please. This I can do. I fill the brush and spoon the paint across the space again; the color slides better now. Again, again. I'm working on a small corner of old wooden siding, and there's so much more to do. I'm not afraid to go slow here; I really can't mess this up. I don't need to speak. All I need to do is feed this space. I can meet these physical needs. It feels good across my arm. Some paint drips onto my boot. I like how it looks, the purple splatter pattern on my toe, so I let another drip fall, on purpose. It looks like I've been doing something fun.

I came across those boots not so long ago, and that purple paint -- I could just feel it again, lubricating the dry old wood of that dry old house. That was a long time ago, now, when I was in a place so far from home, where I doubted myself so intensely, where I felt lost and inadequate. I've never been much for creating things with my hands -- not building, not drawing, not painting. But I found solace that day, covering a blank space with color, feeling like I coudl actually do something real.

I hung onto those boots for years beyond their useful life. They sat in the laundry room, molding probably, but I couldn't get rid of them because they had a history. They look like I was somewhere, like I did something, like I made something. And it's true: I had.

it is what it is

My winter coat is deep and warm and long. I had meant to take it to the cleaner at the end of last winter, but I never made the trip. It hung on its hook all through the warmer seasons, dirty sleeves forgotten. Now, it's not quite cold enough to wear daily, but there have been occasions. The first time I sunk my hand into the left pocket, my fingers closed around something small and smooth and hard. It's always a pleasant surprise to find money in a coat pocket. But this was something else: a stone, handed to me no doubt by small fingers for safe keeping. The memory of the exchange is gone, an exhale into the wind, but I have proof in my pocket. It is completely unremarkable, though: the color of any stone, such an anonymous shape, sized like a million others. I could toss it at any time -- it belongs everywhere -- but for now I'm holding onto it.

Because it reminds me that we're all --
    that I'm just --
         that at the core of everything --
No, none of that.
But I'm keeping it just the same.

waking

The lights are dim. The sun isn't doing anything yet. Two cereal bowls sit next to the sink, a spoon in each so they don't stack neatly. Two kitchen cupboards hang open, the last gesture forgotten. My coffee cup is half empty. I take another sip and trace the warmth from my throat down through my chest and into my stomach. It spreads. I'm not awake yet, but I feel a brightening around my edges. I'm starting to be able to see. It's been a restful night.

Time

Time.
Is of the essence.
I see it falling on the ground like leaves, days ripped of the calendar and fanned across the lawn, some right side up and some up side down so there's red and grey, brightness and shadow, collected there.

Time always goes by so quickly. The clock tells me it's morning, the sky isn't light yet, but if I don't walk the dog right now -- I mean right now -- there won't be enough time before the kids are up and the breakfasts need making and the school bus needs meeting. So I walk in the cold, in the dark, through time I've stolen from myself, from my sleep, and when I return I'm warmer, a little more ready for the sun that's just lightening the sky, just starting to get in.

Then there are pockets of time that stagnate, moments that pass that should be whole, fat minutes slipping by. This is always when I'm sitting still but my mind is not still at all. When I'm asked to play babies by my two-year-old, when she wants me to sit here -- right here -- while she puts Band-aids on my arm. Time crawls then, and my skin will sometimes, too, because I know there are one million things I could be getting done, but I also understand the value of staying here, feeling her small fingers brush my arm. And so I sit, I keep my eyes off the clock, and I try to see her, not the laundry wrinkling all by itself in the cooling dryer. It has all the time in the world.

Sometimes I get to the end of the day and I'm gasping for time. My fantasy is a long stretch of nothing. I imagine myself bored, nothing to do, and I would wallow in that, sunk deep like in the tub, bubbles of time swirling around my toes like hot bath water. I could drink time, breathe it in, save it up, store it, bank it. Back when my kids were babies I thought a lot about borrowing time -- from where, though? -- I'd take it out on loan from someplace safe and the only thing I would want to do with it was sleep. Now I think that would be such a waste. Give me an extra hour and I'd probably do more ironing, or, you know, change the sheets for once. But the best thing would be to just sit and let every delicious minute pass without doing anything at all.

Observer only

With my index finger, I press on the cuticle of my thumb. Nail against skin, it peels back. I don't feel pain. Pain is an explosion. This is just an eyelash, shed and sliding down my cheek.

My other hand steers the car. I crest the hill. A small cross marks the scene of a news story I read nearly a year ago. Even at 60mph, the fresh flowers blaze against the white of the cross.

I continue worrying the skin on my thumb. It doesn't bleed.

a moment alone

Overhead, the clouds move, low-slung and widely spaced, backed by sky in an unnamed shade of blue. I've always thought of clouds as two-dimensional. Not as in a child's drawing -- fluffy, rounded, symmetrical -- but like the bottoms of a fleet of irregular boats as seen from underneath: flat, pressed, only partly in view. But as I watch, the edge of this cloud curls under and the whole thing rotates around no axis at all, eddying in an unseen current. Forming, not formed. One facet is shot through with a subtle rainbow and I inhale to speak, to point it out, before I remember that I'm alone. I close my mouth. The color fades.

mother tongue

At the back of the boat there are two fishing poles standing upright: hooks threaded, lines taut, rods flexed with tension. Something on the other side of the lake breathes out and out and out, a continuous exhale that lifts the waves, rifles through my hair, and catches on the fishing line, vibrating, humming, an accidental harp. It whispers two notes, singing in a language I haven't learned to translate. But I listen anyway.

just a little spell

On Friday I walked the dog at 6a.m. By 6:05 I was carrying her home in a cradle hold, her spine draped and sagging like a C between my arms. An awkward weight. With her eyes at half mast, her legs flopped gently with the rhythm of my step.

A fainting spell, the vet said, probably related to her heart condition and her advanced age. Her blood pressure checked out normal and though her energy seemed lower this weekend, she was otherwise fine and bounded to the door this morning, declaring herself fit to walk. But our pace was slow and she lagged behind, joyless and plodding. She'll sleep it off and beg to come tomorrow morning. I don't think it's a good idea. But she won't understand.

***

For weeks -- no, months -- something has been on the tip of my tongue. Words, I thought, an image. A story? But I examined myself in the mirror and I think it's just been a wad of cotton all along. Fog made material and manifested in my mouth. And I thought it would feel good -- freeing, maybe -- to state the obvious, to accept it, put it out there: I'm not writing right now. Haven't for awhile. Don't expect to any time soon. Why? What's the diagnosis?

But I don't feel free. I feel like I'm staring at a brick wall. A dead end.

Oh, I know dry spells are normal, that sometimes we have to dig holes on the shore and wait for the tide to come in and saturate the sand. But there's no way to know, is there, how long you might lie beached and what might evaporate while you wait.

Maybe the moon is phasing slowly this season. Or maybe the climate has changed. Maybe the sea is already dead. I don't know.

Growth

In the bathroom, a millipede. Too-many legs carry it out of dark pockets, ugly against the white wall. Each appendage moves with a mind of its own, nothing like reeds in a stream.

I could ignore it, pretend I didn't see; it would slink away, disappear, and I could forget. But back in the shadows, it would grow bigger. Its legs would multiply. Who knows where it'd turn up, half a foot long and with a million legs. Maybe in the damp folds of my towel, right where I'd want to wipe my face. Maybe rearing up out of the shower drain, inches from my bare foot.

I cringe and shudder. I don't want to peel it off the wall, I don't want to feel the crunch of its body,  but its image crawls down my spine. I scoop it into a wad of toilet paper and flush, quickly.

But one in the light means how many still hidden? Nesting. I don't want to know.

After my shower, I give my towel an extra good shake. A lot of good that will do. Those legs cling.

on intentions. on mistakes.

Four white shirts came through the wash. Brand new. I laundered them with like colors, and they made the rest of the load look grey.

I hung them on the line even though the air was heavy and the sky was dark. Why did I take the chance? I did not want them to shrink in the dryer.

I stayed outside. Drops began to fall.  I hesitated. The sky watched me for awhile then began to weep. I unpinned the shirts. I layered them in the basket. I hurried them inside.

After a brief tumble in the dryer, I smoothed each shirt with the palm of my hand. The fabric was warm and coarse and dotted all over with bits of green.  The raindrops must have been laced with pollen from the trees that arch over the laundry line, over the house, thick-trunked and messy in the spring.

I think about washing the shirts again but instead I just fold them into imperfect rectangles and tuck them into the drawer. No one will notice.

noticing

It's raining. Not hard, but enough drops collect on my windshield that I want the wipers on. I set the speed to intermittent. In the pause between the movements of the blades, the drops reach a critical mass and for a moment I almost can't see. Then I can.

I adjust the wiper speed. I drive a mile. I forget the rain.

evolution

By midnight, I am a cardboard cutout, corrugated and soaked in kerosene, pockmarked with bullet holes where my own words shot right through me, deflected as they were by your steel armor. How can an 8-year-old be so stubborn?

When sleep finally takes you, I collapse into unconsciousness. At the baby's routine waking, I am the walking dead. She can still draw life from me, though, so I must still be alive. In what way?

In the morning, I walk the dog alone. Rusted metal plates the inside of my skull. The oxidation is almost complete, I tell myself. But the cool air reanimates my form, and I look down at my legs in motion: whole, inflated, two of them. They surprise me.

A great blue heron alights from the creek, wingspan impossible. I could have done better, I admit to the sky. The breeze makes my eyes water and the words taste familiar in my mouth. I will know the curve of each letter by the end of this: all the sharp edges and ragged corners pressed into my heart.

But that's how we evolve, isn't it? Better upon better, inch my inch. From slime to heron, great and blue. It only takes a couple billion years.

eyes open

I awake into the near-light of a morning stilled with fog. The air and the hour weigh heavy. Maybe the sun isn't going to come up today.

But it does. Of course it does. Only instead of a distinct orange orb, the sunrise smears across the sky. I inhale the moisture and the image into my lungs and all I can think is this:

I can see. Oh god, I can see.

on thawing, and thinking

Night squeezed a few flakes out of the damp air and the boardwalk is speckled white and slick. I walk without trust, bridged over this thawed and yawning marshland. Just ahead, a knot in the wood looks up at me and I stop, not wanting to step on it. It weeps with moisture in a form somewhere between frost and dew. I could believe it's sap, softened by the onset of spring, bleeding life into limb and leaf. But these are hewn planks. Dead wood. My footsteps echo across the boardwalk.

from inside

My alarm sounds at 5:40. I had set it to a gentle, swelling song but the notes still hook me in the gills and leave me flopping on shore. Not enough, I gasp. But I get up anyway and pull jeans over leggings, surveying my starting point: rust in my joints and fog behind my eyes.

I always feel better by 6:01, though, so I keep moving. The daily walk with my neighbor and our dogs has become a critical part of a healthy routine that has held me whole through these months of cabin fever and sleep deprivation.

But by the time I've put in my contacts and sipped a bit of coffee, I realize that it's raining too hard to go out. I'm disappointed, of course, but I'll take these few pre-dawn minutes alone anyway. I sit on the couch, hanging onto my mug, watching fog web the spaces between the still-bare tree branches. The coffee's heat steeps into my palms and the rain taps on the roof (of my soul).

I don't want the sun to come up just yet. I'm not ready for the day to begin.

But her bare feet on the hardwood floor draw me to the surface. I smile at her sleepy face, at her bright eyes, at the life brimming there. She doesn't need any coffee.

Mama, can I turn on the light? she whispers.

Of course, I answer. Light opens the room.

I look back at the window but the lamp creates a glare, and the glass no longer promises a portal to the world outside. Instead, it reflects the wall, the fireplace, the mantle clock, her form. My focus shifts and I swallow the last of my coffee. It's time to make breakfast.

on spring

Snow melts and icicles drip. Birds sing. Closed windows muffle these voices.

My heart has been beating all winter against clamped veins and bottlenecks. Now my fingers are dead branches. I press them against the window frame but it doesn't give. I can't be sure I'm using all that much force.

Through smudged glass the sun brushes my face and I turn toward it, slow like I'm under water. But the light is sincere: it means something now. The hours that pass trace promises across the living room floor.  That the season will change. That beneath the peeling bark and rotting cork, my core is green. That the sap will run again. And that yes, yes, I am alive.

and this, too, shall pass

The tree held her arm branch steady, patient while the snowflakes piled on, one by one, over hours, over a day. Steadfast, still, while the individuals iced over and fused together into something brittle and heavy. Sometime later, that snowy shirtsleeve slipped and bent at the elbow but froze into place before it could fall. Now it hangs there by a thread of something I can't see. I thought gravity was stronger than that.

Soon the clouds separate and the sun shines strong for this season and I squint through the window. While I watch, that strange U-bend made out of snow lets go completely. It falls as a burst of powder so fine I could inhale it, single crystals that catch the sun just before they disappear into a whole world of white. Gone.

The branch cuts across space, straight and naked. A living shadow. Don't worry, I whisper. It'll snow again tomorrow.

sunrise

Everything exists in shades of blue: brittle and cold, deep and unforgiving. Layers of ice hang from shingles, hang in the air. But a fire kindles below the horizon and the flames are melting a hole in the sky. Something's getting in. I watch from the window to see what might materialize.

Slowly a bonfire separates from the low, licking blaze and the sun erupts orange above the bare treetops. Hope singes the morning.

I lift my nose to sniff the woodsmoke curling from the neighbor's chimney.  The furnace kicks on with a click and a whoosh. The air is dry and full of static. I reach out out to warm my hands in the ascending glow, rubbing my palms together. My fingertips knock against the window glass, a block of ice.

after yoga class

my skin felt thin all day. tight across my cheeks, bleached and lifeless, dry and flaking when i smiled. dull, zero, just there. i squinted into the sun and felt the wrinkles deepen around my eyes.

now i rinse my dinner plate.  it's dark outside. i look up and suddenly i see a face in the window above the sink.

stop. it's only my reflection. but who is that? cheeks full and flushed, eyes bright. and -- really? points of light bursting from my skin. it's just the christmas lights in the neighbor's yard, transposed across my forehead. but i feel a heat behind my eyes.

makeshift

I strike the potato peeler against the apple. The skin comes off in small, irregular discs that shoot into the sink and stick to the sides of the basin. Face up, face down: flecks of red and white. The naked fruit is wet in my hand.

Why should I bother to run a knife around the perimeter instead? Art in the kitchen? The curl breaks before it can even be called a curl and I gouge away too much of the good flesh. My mom can do it, though. I guess it takes practice.

Why should I have to peel this apple? Slice it and sprinkle cinnamon? They won't eat it any other way.

And I want them to. Eat it. 

I open the tap and the pieces of peel pool in the drain's mouth.  I'll run the disposal later, after I rinse the dinner dishes.