My weekends over the last few months have been consumed by art, art receptions, lectures, and audiobooks in the later evening. It all feels very personal and private and introspective. There’s an understanding with myself that I’m simultaneously weeding through inspiration and biding my time. The last year of my life has been a certain kind of breeze, held up almost entirely by gratitude. There is something very free about me: I’m not married; I have no children; I have no pets; I have no debt; I have a perfect credit score and fabulous health. I barely have any family anymore. My life is all my own; my own choices. I’m often asked why I’m not married. A new chapter … Read More
Stolen Goods
The contractors had been in the house for a week replacing French doors that opened to an outside seating area. When the bulk of the work was done, the only person remaining was the painter finishing the inside trim and other paint touch-ups around the house. The owner of the home has gone through the same routine every day for years. She puts the jewelry into the safe or on the vanity tray on her bathroom counter every night. She didn’t put her jewelry on the next morning as she had a rescheduled water aerobics class. The painter was left alone. The three pieces were her everyday precious things: the Rolex President’s watch; a platinum gold diamond wedding band; an emerald … Read More
Locked In
Blazing hot summers can warp the mind. Anyone is forgiven for holing up inside all day to hide from the heat; lying down directly in line with a window unit set to 69*. But the mind can start spinning like the ceiling fan. Spinning away the doldrums. She preferred the sound of the a/c to television on in the background. Something about daytime tv made her feel depressed. Watching tv all day was wasting away, frankly. She resented the tv; she resented people who watched tv. This tiny, six hundred-square foot duplex could get really brutal in the summer. All of the heat would gather itself into a fireball in the kitchen. The clothes washer and dryer shared space with … Read More
Limbs
An archeologist digs beneath. He grabs a bone and brings it to his nose, smelling the soil it lain in for years. It is too familiar to be so old. He is reminded of a box in his attic full of lightbulbs. They were missing their metal caps and filaments. Placed in the box upright, one could take them for bulbous glasses which would cut the mouth if used to drink from. He saw those empty bulbs as telling him to fill up with his own ideas. Why was he excavating for the past, seeking out others? ~~~ Lithe and leisurely she stretches others watch her she hates being watched her own self-consciousness are they aware of this? In the gym locker room, there is a very … Read More
Love
Once upon a time, a young tween dallied with an older crowd too high on their intellectual horses. They’d convene at bespoke coffee shops and sit in a circle writing, then sharing, their poetry. The proses were overwrought in attempts to define and describe love. It barely scratched the surface of lived experience. They mostly knew of like and wanting. They didn’t know the meaning of the verb, love -or that it is a verb, an action; a behavior. It is not a line you drop to claim someone or a tool used to beg for forgiveness, “Don’t you know I love you though!” You can love the taste, the smell, the touch or feel, the look of any number of things. To … Read More