Blog : Beautiful-Things
Holding Hands

We walk up the stairway of my grandmother's porch. Towers of brick flank the stairs, which later we will scramble up to leap into the soft green grass below...
Dead Man Tim

Tim's apartment was cleaned and all his belongings put out on a curb in the parking lot. This is the saddest part...
Yes, They've Met

There's a 1/16 scale Texaco truck parked on our mantle, its frame crooked and stack bent from ways it's been stored. I dust it. Then, I dust my son's toolbox, an eighth-grade shop project etched with the name he's inherited from good stock. My husband's grandfather drove a Texaco truck...
Ice

I'm nine months pregnant with my first child, and the snow in NYC has been beaten into submission. I've just come off a packed subway...
Seattle, After the Rain

To the birds, we must look like ants at a picnic, the way we crawl from our dark caves and run crazed for sidewalks and grassy parks...
This is Where You'll Find Me

New York City, after we lied then made rules. It shouldn't work by a long shot but it does....
Lines of Light

At sunset in Burlington the power lines are golden like the afterglow of sparklers when children twirl them in the air. A frayed ribbon of sunlight stretches out...
What We Did with the Honey

The day we learned you were gone, Howie says he knocked, nothing answered.
Parabolic

His first summer married, my father tended chickens. His job was to chase the birds out of the tin coop on hot days...
Morning (repeat)

When my infant daughter wakes at two in the morning and her father cannot coax her back to sleep...
The Day to Day

Sifting the flour. Squeezing the lever once. And then waiting. For a moment, it is winter again. I take my finger and make snow angels in the little blue bowl. After you died, they said the only thing to do was keep on living...
The Day to Day

Sifting the flour. Squeezing the lever once. And then waiting. For a moment, it is winter again. I take my finger and make snow angels in the little blue bowl.Â
White (repeat)

We no longer remember the sound of birdsong or the feel of dry pavement beneath our feet, but we walk to school anyway because school is the place we're meant to walk to on Tuesday mornings. Temperatures register -23 below zero...
Grace (repeat)

"Thank you," I tell the manager, "for taking my order so late." The sizzle of the grill frames my words. "I appreciate it."
Holding (repeat)

My sister and I live on either side of sixty. We've been mothers half our lives. Visiting her in Oregon, Ashland running a steady hundred degrees for days into weeks, we head to Lake of the Woods...
Turkey Soup (repeat)

On Thanksgiving, after the turkey is carved and gutted - after we slice through half of the twenty-pound bird my mother insists on ordering...
Birthday Cards

Once, I wrote a birthday poem for her forty-second. It described her love of wine, and how she was so very fine. Exceedingly satisfied at the neat rhyme and my infinite untapped potential, I awaited glowing praise...
An Absence of Yellow

It's mid-August and already my grandfather's pumpkins boast a bright orange. His cucumbers have laced thin vines up the patio rail. The tomatoes flush cherry-red in waves. My grandparents bribe me with vegetables to come for a visit...
Claudia

She was only 15 and already had lost a leg to bone cancer. Our high school girls' Sunday school class had pondered this for a few weeks...
In the Fold

She wields a basket of clean linen with easy confidence: one, two moves across the chest to make a towel into thirds...
Only Now

Only now, as you stand center of an aisle carpeted royal blue, where you and your older sisters, styled by mother in hand-sewn dresses to match her own, once trailed like ducks down the narrow river...
Bike Ride

I don't remember if I wrapped my hands around my father when he let me ride on the back of his yellow Schwinn....
Red Birds

I hand the plate of raw vegetables to Dad. He sets it on the shelf attached to the grill, settles his arm around me. Pointing to the tree above, he says, "See those red birds?"
Bare, Naked

Rain falls, dimpling puddles. I kick off my clogs. My toenails shine like sparkling pumpkin peel. I slide my underwear and jeans down my legs...
On Guilt

When I was a baby and woke up at night, my mother held me, her arms a boat on a gentle sea. Oh, the helpless power of the small, to be thus cupped in the world's warm hand...
Water

Many days I set a thermos of jasmine tea beside me on my desk. Jasmine tea is mostly water, perfumed by flowers. My thermos is stainless steel with metallic green paint and says L.L. Bean on one side...
When Students Cry

I know I shouldn't hug them, but I can't seem to stop, though I'm sure HR would advise it. I'd like to stop their crying as well, but that's even less tractable. Like the girl last fall who came to my 8:00 class wearing loose shirts and, after arriving late one day, told me she was pregnant.
Mars and a Reflection of Mars

"There are two red planets tonight," I say. And you reply, "What a brave universe". And I feel brave. Two 30-lb packs hang near the tent we pitched just before it got dark enough to need headlamps. It's Night One of this backpacking trip...
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