Thrown back…again…
11 week ago
It was quiet in the little town. Redwoods jutted behind shake roofs sitting atop age old buildings cracked with the need of siding and paint. Two blocks lined with little shops. We walked and we drove and we ate Italian food until I determined I would not need to eat again forever…
All the while, I listened to the memories of my girl. She smiled and she laughed and she cried some as she remembered her days gone by. Her memories stirred my past up into a cloud of what was and what should have been.
And my heart hurt.
I don’t like to remember some things.
But our journey though her history forced me to do so. I had been unwittingly tied into the past and could not undo the knot. I tugged and pulled and frayed its edges. I scratched at the ropes. I pulled my wrists until the rope of my unresolved experience rubbed me raw. The failure to escape frustrated my heart to the point of More >
Fragile Hearts
04 weeks ago
The heat, long distant for so many months, suddenly banged on my back deck until the house fairly melted under the beating. Surprise attack gave the sun extra force as my kitchen windows are not yet fit with proper shields. The living and dining room, safe within their shaded trees, provided a reverie from the sudden upsurge in temperature. The kitchen, however, gave in to the onslaught and fell in its oppression. Lack of shade burned the windows until they gave to the heat and warmed my favorite room. It was sweaty in there.
I traipsed through, knowing the thicker air would stick to me as I went out the door. The deck was sunshine hot, and absolutely unforgiving of my bare feet. I slipped into my flip flops and headed down the stairs.
There was beauty under that heat. Beauty in danger of drying up in its surprise attack.
I rounded the bottom step and stopped at the half More >
First Place
12 months ago
It is cold in the basement.
The damp air smells of seventy year old digging, wet with the years of rain seeping under the shorter-than-should-be door that opens the packed mud entry.
I wondered about that entry as I headed down the deck stairs and wound around and under the deck braces until I could duck my head through the midget door. The area is about five feet long. One side holds two makeshift, wooden, whitewashed shelves, added long after the room came to be. Over the last weeks I have piled those little shelves with the stuff of homemaking…paintbrushes and trays, screwdrivers and mollies, small piles of sandpaper and containers of screws. The other side of the entry is a short cement wall that grows with each step until it meets up with almost-normal-height basement door. It’s an odd little place, hard to maneuver and harder to understand. Its almost as though the builder More >
Stillness
02 months ago
In the city early mornings are loud.
Garbage trucks beat the traffic in the predawn hours and then commuters barrage the streets with a cacophony of engine and muffler tones. Trains slow and stop in the city limits, picking up product and person before they rumble off under the sound of a mournful wailing complaint.
The dogs are confused. Trading the sound of an eagle’s call for a firetruck’s siren was not in their plan. They raise noses and ears to the city life, first barking, then howling before they seek refuge inside where the noise is muffled. They trot to their beds and drop a sigh as they drop their bodies on the soft pillow. They are just not sure how to act.
I am not sure either.
Mountain quiet is a memory now. In its place is city sound, with all its bustling and running and push and panic. My heart, used to the tender beat of the sunrise, pounded with the rush of More >