Love is a sticky sweet thing
A ripe fig
Made to be eaten, shared
If its not taken
It falls
It splits on the ground
The first insects crowd the tear
The fruit, sweet, begins to rot
Congeals, hardening
And then there is no having it
Then its as good as poison
We have been climbing this mountain for so long that I cannot remember what it is like not to climb. My feet have been moving forward, following my mothers feet, which follow my fathers feet, since before time began. I have worn this backpack for so many eons that I can no longer feel my hands, they float like cold ghosts at my sides. My legs no longer follow commands. I am covered in a cold sweat, as though someone has rubbed ice cubes all over my body.
My mother points to something off through the aspen trees. Whatever it is, I miss its shape between the leaning white trunks with their green petals. Even this is no longer bea
He guides me through the clouds of dust rising on either side and in front of us. The sun has become its afternoon self, with less light but somehow almost more heat. The beeps and honks of the fair move behind us as the last people trickle on and off the old rides. We wander out into the deserted fringes, past fast food vendors, the floors around which are splattered with oil and ketchup slicks.
We pass empty stalls, the animals gone earlier in the fair. My boyfriend takes my arm, guiding me towards the seedy edges. A clean short white tent, its canvas sides pinned back sits alongside the animal stalls and fast food vendors. A small girl,
My mother claims she never had me help in the kitchen when I was little. But my one of my strongest memories, a moment of epiphany for me as a child, happened while in the kitchen with her.
I was five or six years old, and we were living in the Condominium in Florida then which means Dad was away often on business. Perhaps this is why I was in the kitchen at that time, a helper and a companion. Dad was going to be in town and home for dinner that night, and we were making a salad, something, apparently, with which I could help. We had a can of those soft pitted black olives that taste slightly of aluminum and are wonderful to eat off of the
As always, at the beginning of the dream, I am standing in an empty room alone. I make a quick tour of the space, but I already know which dream I am in. The sky that can be seen from the windows and above the courtyards I run through is heavy with gray and yellow clouds. The air is still and thick and when I breathe it is like trying to swallow cloth. The only sounds at first are my feet pounding against the cheap flooring and birds, by the hundreds, making their strange racket above.
Here the dream can take its first two turns. I will continue running through this empty labyrinth of rooms, hallways, and paved courtyards. I will yell and
I am in my kitchen, and the mess, as usual seems to be piling up. Plates are stacked alongside the sink, or squeezed haphazardly into the dishwasher. I tiptoe around the kitchen, closing the fridge as quietly as I can to avoid waking up my roommates in the bedroom next door. My stomach grumbles, Ive not eaten for at least a half a day. I take a little cardboard packet of eggs out of the fridge, and then my bread from the cupboard. I heat a small saucepan of water to a boil and throw in a half a teaspoon of salt. Gently, I lower two eggs, still in their shell, into the pot. Waiting the four minutes for the eggs to cook, I toast my bread.
I sat on the purple-carpeted floor next to my friend Heather, playing with paper dolls and looking through magazines. Our mothers talked just a few feet away, listening to music in the background. A sound started up, like something woven into the fabric of the music, so soft it was indistinguishable. It reached inside me and squeezed my heart, it made my breath come faster and faster as though someone were pumping at my lungs, I flushed pink and hot all over. The faint familiar noise terrified me and scrambled my tongue. I looked around stealthily; no one else seemed to notice what had happened to the music. Mommy, can we turn the music
I have been paging through the guide book all day, checking and double checking to make sure I do not miss anything. I focus hard, trying to blot out my mother and Di sitting in the front seat, their idle chatter beginning to grate on my nerves after almost two weeks in the beautiful green of southwestern England. We bump over the knobby road that has lead us in some fashion from one end of the coast to the other during our day of escape from tourist-choked Padstow. So far we have dined at a featureless café in Boscastle, where I labored over a pureed vegetable soup I have become overly familiar with in the past week in Cornwall and we a
There was a ghost in the first house we moved into in Santa Fe, but only I could hear it. For the first few years I thought it lived down the road, that the hammering noise, a slow rhythmic knocking like wood falling against wood came from somewhere outside, in the driveway maybe. Then, it was just nature. Then, it was okay.
I told my parents about it one morning and they frowned, Probably just the shooting range down the highway, they said. Dont worry about it.
After that it moved into my bedroom wall. It would start knocking lightly, a hollow tapping like an empty glass bottle against a rock, by the foot of the bed. The noise wou
I stand on the porch
and watch the field,
dry and brittle as an old woman,
tall twigs, bleached gray,
crack back and forth.
All painted in three colors
by the same palette,
nothing grabs the heart or the eye.
Out of these bleak hills,
what could generate
the vibrancy that will come with spring?
Perhaps beneath my feet,
in earth the color of bone,
living things,
white twisted roots like grubs
and green shoots like fingers,
have begun to struggle through.
The boat
has its own thoughts,
has malicious intent,
as it pitches and sways
over these slow seas.
The heavy smell of fish, and salt,
the sour scent of sickness,
clings to the skin.
People stand
so tightly packed at the rail
it looks as though they are holding hands.
They cradle last minute packages,
pictures of those left behind
and what could not be done without.
The sound of hyms,
prayers whispered,
broken by emotion,
scatter in the wind.
I. How God Made Humans:
Clay,
Carved out of the riverbank
After a flood.
Warmed, in the palm of a hand,
Then,
Pressed into the shape
Of limbs.
II. Adam:
The hard, brittle wood
Of a walnut shell;
An eagle's talon
Severed clean from the leg;
The struggle of a live salmon;
Pale roots pulled up,
exposed;
And the heat
Of an animal, asleep.
III. Eve:
The dampness of air after rain;
A broken egshell's
Fragile edges;
The bitter taste
Of a pine needle;
The feel of an oyster
Inside it's shell;
And a dandelion
Grown old, white, and feathered.
As morning crawls
over the mountains, the sky,
gold slipping into blue,
grows against the dark ridge
and I walk through the trees in solitude.
Yellow light comes with the day,
black pines stand
against the pale sky.
Cold air runs like water
into my mouth and nose.
Crows, black razor wings spread out,
they cut through the light.
Their voices climbing
up through the air.
My feet crunch against gravel
and the sound echoes out
into a silent world
as the sun begins to burn hot above.
A pomegranate, split in two,
its juice bled out,
drunk up by the soil.
The heavy seeds cling
to the walls, clustered
around at the mouth.
the skin, like raw red meat
bruised gold.
There was the heavy smell
of a fruit, overripe
and rotting in its opulence.
The croak of an old crow
Perched in the branches
Of a twisted pine,
Draws the attention of children
Playing in the yard below.
The bird tilts its head
And fixes a sharp eye
On the humans
As they scoop up handfuls
Of rocks at their feet.
The children seem beautiful,
Backs arched,
Before their stones descend
Like rain upon the tree.
She kept her silence, her back turned
and her shoulders hunched around her, like a shell.
Tears dripped from her face. Bitter words
made the space between us larger than ever before.
The ground was split open like a shattered windowpane
between the shrunken trees. Dry heat pricked my skin
with needles of dust. The leaves curled up
like cocoons against the unforgiving sun.
It hadn't rained in months, but that evening,
as dusk came, the sky was full of storm light.
Thick yellow clouds that hung over the mountains
like a promise of biblical floods.
The wind tore its fingers into the mountainside,
and called out in a voice rough with
At the airport, my sister bought me a lemonade.
The waxed paper cup grew damp in the heat,
sides caving in where I squeezed too hard.
An old man, his skin stretched
across bones as fragile as a bird's,
a red bindi painted in the folds of his forehead,
crouched to defecate in the street.
In the air conditioned backseat of the car
my sister's hands reached for me, tried to cover my eyes.
Between her fingers
the streets of Varanasi flit past in yellow strips.
Out on the water in unstable boats,
huddled parents cast their lifeless children
into the river. Small white bones, like pearls,
washed up on the banks of the Ganges.
Lying next to my sister, our mattress resists
the angles in my body. Sheets prickling
my legs in the heat, I listen to her sleep.
Warm air sits heavy on my chest, each breath slow
and measured to match hers.
In my mouth, tastes spicy as mango curry.
Stretch my fingers out against her longer hands,
straighten my legs alongside hers.
Sweat runs down my back and soaks my slip.
I find simple constellations in her freckles.
I say our names together
until they become one word, until the syllables
no longer have a meaning.
Say them backwards so they sound the same.
Listen to the whir of the old fan above us,
blowing her black
Last night, summer heat came
And standing outside,
I touched the air, thick as warm water.
The moths came then,
Through the dark blue of the sky,
And all during the night, their wings beat together.
They hovered at the light over my bed,
Created a canopy of soft browns and gray.
The sound of small bodies,
Fragile as rice paper,
Thumping against a harder surface.
This music, this drumming of nature,
Was the rhythm of their short lives.
Apologies for the huge number of Autobio entries, but I just finished up a memoir class and decided to add the work from the class here. Feel free to avoid and ignore. Or read.
I HAVE to watch - when I know you and get all the sweet movie recs. It's Sarah H. of the sort who brings Joppa tea and spends 30 minutes in the store every time.