Issue 18
November 2024
My therapist tells me to track everything I do on a typical weekday
5:47: Wake up. Stumble to the bathroom. Read two poems. Google seventh circle of hell. 7:29: Sweep floor. Approve grocery substitutions. Wonder again if medication is right for my child, or if I just want my life to be easier. 9:02: Covet a vintage VW bus while waiting in the carpool lane. Dream briefly about running away. Admire foliage. 9:30: Start workout. 10:38: Target pickup line. 11:11: Pick up groceries. Let the dog out. Refresh email eight times. 12:37: Fold laundry. Start and lose a mental argument. 1:16: Shower. Attempt to do hair (hideous). Eat a high-protein, nasty lunch. 1:58: Start editing novel. Buy a “Book Loft” candle in the Bath and Body Works sale. Pet the dog while he noses through office trash. 2:30: Put bath mats and towels in the wash. Pick-up middle-schooler. Ply him for information on the sixth-grade dance. Note his blush. 4:13: Hug younger kids when they tumble through the door, a whirlwind of papers and jackets. Cook dinner. Eat dinner. Doom scroll. 6:37: Heave self off the recliner and do the damn dishes. Drive kids to piano. Come home just long enough to sweep. 8:06: Bring them back, but take the long way to look at Halloween decorations. 8:41: Harass everyone about getting ready for bed. Harass husband about money. Get the bath mats out of the dryer. It’s too late, because the bathroom floor is wet. Listen to daughter sounding out words. 9:12: Eat a fistful of bread. Read. 10:03: Tell middle-schooler to take his meds and go to bed. Watch TV. 10:36: Brush teeth, shimmy off the too-tight jeans and the too-tight day. Collapse in bed. Dream.
The fox
It’s November and My Body Remembers
Crashes into memories like a car wreck. Nostalgia becomes a cut of metal cupping my skull while I sleep. Dreams of windows, sunroofs, cracked ceilings that let in all the light. Hope knots my stomach / my synapses / my shoulder blades, but past Novembers nurse me back to Hell. And I am here, and I am heavy, and I am heaving my hopes onto the next generation, praying innocent minds cannot be bent by fear, enflamed into caricatures of our worst possible selves. I try to stay present but the past is breaking down the door, rattles the frames right off the wall. Panic presses its lips to mine — November’s kiss nips at the mouth. Tastes like rust. Smells like blood. Dreams crushed like flowers. Years spent gluing petals suturing wounds, tending to goodness like a sick child. It is November and my body remembers. It is begging not to go back.
I haven't written any poems lately
But just this week I pointed my family skyward to gaze at clouds of cotton candy pink And today I stood silently in the backyard while leaves swirled around my body to join the thickening carpet below I haven't written any poems lately but I have tickled my daughter until she gasped for breath as her laughter bounced off the walls I've warmed my hands by a crackling campfire and I've prayed in a faith-filled circle of strong women I haven't written any poems lately but I've laid my hand on the chest of the one I love, his steady heartbeat thrumming into my palm I've turned off my phone and turned on my wonder, reveled in the beauty this broken world still has to offer I haven't written any poems lately I've been living inside the one written for me
Do you dream?
Dear friend, do you dream like this? Do you scurry, manically, trying to tidy, while cracking-spined paperbacks scatter their pages all over the crumb-infested floor? Do you dream, friend, do you flap your fins (because you are a fish) at the floor crumbs? Do you screech, friend, do you squawk, “generally believed to be a published AW-FAAAAAAAAA!” at the falling pages? Do you ever dream, dear friend, do you try to clean the caravan before company comes, but you can’t, because you are a fish? Friend, do you dream, do you squawk and flap, do you flail and wail at the falling pages? Do you you wake, AW-FAAAAAAAAAAAAA screaming in your ears? Do you dream?
Kindergarten Carpool
Let it go, let it go! Elsa bellows through minivan speakers. (My mandated break from the Frozen soundtrack lasted exactly two days. I couldn’t stop singing Love is an Open Door in the middle of the night.) I put the van in park, we have six minutes until carpool line starts. Cars nest under porticos and around the parking lot. I spy minivans, SUVs, a couple sedans. White, black, gray, red. My three-year-old daughter swings her legs, sings with conviction, adjusts her new Queen Elsa crown. Click! My five-year-old son unbuckles himself and climbs into the passenger seat. He starts the song over and rolls down the window. The mothers look up (briefly) wave smile look down (again) at their phones One by one children pip out of cars, hatchlings from eggs. Out of sunroofs. Out of passenger windows. Out of backset windows. Sometimes just the kindergartner. Sometimes with a sibling. The birdlings pump arms lift claws to the sky illuminate faces with morning sun turn toward the light They call (and answer) Isabelle! Simon! Charlie! Ethan! Mason! I’m going to run faster than you during recess! No, I am! Elation paints their faces without shame they repeat the same pattern day after day after day their love, friendship, joy, enthusiasm unbound, untethered. They freely fly.
On Belonging
There is a man on stage, all muscle, twirling and circling inside a human-sized hoop. I watch his head whip around and around, and I recall something I read once—how the only way to remain oriented when your body plunges into entropy is to pick a spot on the wall and fix your eyes there, to remember which way is up and which way is down, to find where your body fits in the place of things. This is one kind of belonging, and here is another— that even in this disorienting world, I can find your face with every revolution. Even in the chaos, I can be soft and strong and trust that, when it’s all over, I will find a way to land quietly, again, on my feet.
Fight!Fight!Fight!
My daughter holds a sword. She’s related to a king and he’s not orange. She of age to cast the her first and lasting vote. She could cut in line or slice ankles, but she’s prefers to think and act outside the box and above the bar. She is the future that’s female and more. She is the fresh face of the beaten brows, and she is charging across the border, to the top of the hill, down to the valley, into the river, standing up to her waist in water, hoisting a hard-won edge to catch the glint of an endless sky.
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I haven’t written any poetry lately, but I’ve been living in it too :) big hugs to you all. Thank you for this healthy Friday snack :)
Love this, the line of the fox who saw the man but kept eating , so poignant!