wheels

I am sitting with my chin in my hands and thinking that I probably handled this wrong. I address this to the half empty bag of Reese's cups and the pizza crusts. You were the wrong salve. The right salve was flat on my back on my bed and Mozart and I did get there. But anyway, a car is a car, and as much as I have loved my tiny silver one, I shouldn't be surprised when its age and northern heritage catch up to it and the mechanic writes in bold ink on the bill SAFETY ISSUE: DANGEROUS TO DRIVE, and then traces this statement in highlighter--as if I'd forget his warning. The short stick of it is that I don't have the money to trade up, or over, or even down and probably won't for some time. I am chronically short of funds. But the long stick of it is that I can indeed live my life pretty damn well without a car--I have biked and walked the miles across town for work for years, I have a grocery store just up the hill, I have a free city bus pass, and I have a lover with a car like a chariot who always promises to come when I need him. And just last weekend I learned that I am indeed capable of biking the twelve miles out to my parents' house, and not having a car to drive at the time that my mom is having surgery to scoop out the rest of the cancer will certainly not stop me from getting to their house of my own steam if I need to, and I won't, you know, I won't have to, because even without a motor of my own, I am not alone.

smug

I am beginning to feel smug. I am beginning to be so, so certain of my love and the validity and promise of the way I know it will lay out in front of me. It makes me feel a sense of stability I've never felt before. It makes me confident and grateful and facing-the-right-way and it makes me feel smug. Like the heart buried within my own is not going to cease its beating. Smug. Like I'm one of the lucky ones.

rime

Today was about salt, and the way it rimed my body after two hours on my bike as I pushed over the hills and to the next town north and then back again.

I keep testing myself, and the answer is salt, and the answer is lenience.

it's kind of nice

Today I am embracing my own ignorance.

ice for the drinks

My hands won't warm up today. Maybe it started when I walked this morning from my car with a heavy bag of diet coke and what else? I don't even want to try to remember what all I bought last night for the birthday party today. The bag was heavy and I had to keep switching hands. Since then I have been cold. I keep a clingy darkheathergray sweater on the back of my office chair. When it's on I think to myself that if I cut a few holes at the end of the sleeves I could pull them down past my palms. If I sewed the ends closed. I'm not going to say I am not tempted. I never used to be this way--I used to have fire in my fingers. I worry that this is a hallmark of getting-closer-to-thirty, but this is stupid. I know I'm still doing well because I can blow up ten balloons in short order and still have the air to laugh about the way I become a living ball of static--me with my sweater and thin, flying hair and shuffling feet and balloons all around.

shades

I bought a pair of sunglasses at a dollar store. They're brown and they're missing a nose piece and I'm not sure--I haven't decided yet--whether they make me look badass or just backwards with 99 cents of plastic perched on my face. I'm not sure that I mind which. Bought them because I sat on my last pair of sunglasses a week ago. Sat on them because even though I have a legitimate chair now I've been using the floor as my desk chair for four years and it's a hard habit to break. Don't ask me why my deceased sunglasses were on the floor. Don't.

I AM THE COWARD WHO DID NOT PICK UP THE PHONE

I am the coward who did not pick up the phone, so as never to know.
So many clocks and yardsticks dumped into an ocean.

I am the ox which drew the cart full of urgent messages straight into
the river, emerging none the wiser on the opposite side, never looking
back at all those floating envelopes and postcards, the wet ashes of
some loved one's screams.

How was I to know?

I am the warrior who killed the sparrow with a cannon. I am the
guardian who led the child by the hand into the cloud, and emerged
holding only an empty glove. Oh--

the digital ringing of it. The string of a kite of it, which I let go of.
Oh, the commotion in the attic of it--in the front yard, in the back yard,
in the driveway--all of which I heard nothing of, because I am the
one who closed the windows and said This has nothing to do with us.
In fact, I am the one singing this so loudly I cannot hear you even now.

(Mama, what's happening outside? Honey, is that the phone?)

I am the one who sings, The bones and shells of us.
The organic broth of us.
The zen gong of us.

Oblivious, oblivious, oblivious.


~Laura Kasischke

trying

Shored up by a thermos of coffee and a roof sheltering me from the rain, I am trying very hard to convince myself that I am not not ok.

displaced

I'm craving winter.

I'm glad that my library is full of right angles today. I need them. Without a shelf to follow, a rail to grasp, I'm not sure where I would end up.

the fuss

I think perhaps I'm a bigger problem before I open my mouth than after. It's funny that way.

Anyway, this was a great weekend. I'm talking 3-D black light mini golf great. Bill Bryson, haunted houses, burgers and fries, Scott Pilgrim, wine-hazy board games great. Late nights and air mattresses great. Pixel blocks and newlyweds great. There was even a stop for German food and live accordion music on the way home last night, just the two of us, and then after I was home, as it was during the whole trip, a hot, low-hanging brand of love between my man and me.

What the fuss is wrong with my mind and body that kept itself directly in the line of limbo all this while?