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adult fiction
when i was in sixth grade i got dropped off at the library every day after school. my mom was at work and my dad long gone. there was a mini whiteboard at the desk for kids to write a note to their parents if they went to 7/11 for soda. monday through friday i roamed the stacks looking for books on esp and wilderness survival. the only section i never strayed into was romance. love was irrelevant, sex was something meant to hurt you, humiliation passed on behind the bathroom door. i was just trying to learn how to carve a canoe with your pocket knife and lash shelter together with vines. i had friends who hid trashy pink covered volumes under their beds. they traded them back and forth with whispers and wondering about first kisses and first times and what it would all be like. i was horrified. the flipped hair, the bicep curl, heavy breathing and thrust, sighing dialogue. someone’s lace on the carpet. and already the boys on the playground with rolled shirt sleeves and designs shaved at their temples, the girls with short acid wash skirts and aquanet bangs. not for me. desire was foreign, carved out of my body like a tumor, cancerous possibilities that will just kill you. i was hell bent on escape, honing my super powers and digging roots in the dark dirt.
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frame
and yes, i’ve been crying for months, and rightly, but tonight you’re playing music i hate in the kitchen, and looking lovely. i don’t remember dinner or dessert or anything you said, i just keep thinking of your silhouette in the window. shoulders tight, deep blue t shirt, jeans slung low. and sometimes love is like that. framed by the light obliterating everything else. the kingdom of god will not be realized
by those new blue shoes or that album or the glittery skirt i saw or the pills or the liquor or even my car with the racing stripes. it might be under her sleepy eyelids though, or his leg tossed over my lap. it might be in that tiny baby fist. it might. but you’re lost if you think it’s in 12 hour office days exhausted nights early mornings it’s not in your sadness or even your rage. the kingdom of god will not be realized by prolonging our own suffering. open your hand. find your own genius there in your palm. take a walk in the dim and notice the stars. then fight harder. in whole foods
i grabbed volcanic clay face wipes in the checkout line at whole foods where i was buying 6 dollar juice with turmeric to clear my energy or burn the pain away or whatever miracle 6 dollar juice is supposed to perform. i grabbed the package so i could wash my face in the car and nobody would run into me still half crying, patting my face with paper towels in the bathroom before class. yes. depression is a monster that no wheatgrass or crystals can tame, no windy walks or good books or naps or other things nobody has time for can lift its weight. don’t bother with prayers. i’m positive jesus is bored with me. there are no miracles floating in the bottom of any bottle. but i do like 6 dollar juice and maybe some kind of organic carob confection. or a new water bottle that will keep my drink cold for the next century. in this landscape there is no certain road but i am lost so often i know there is always a way home. i will wind through this unmapped expanse til i find the back door. you can come with me. 4th of july poem
not until she can lie on her back and stare at the stars in the july twighlight ink pooling across the horizon and fireworks starting to pop over the water, listening to her kids fight over sparklers and the last popsicle not until this mama from guatemala mexico syria currently sitting in a cage children with or without her currently desperate to get to family to get to home not until she’s on the grass next to you will it be ok for us to celebrate the birth of freedom. |
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August 2020
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