Blog : Beautiful-Things
Drawn In
| January 11, 2021 I got better at drawing when I began to think of petting an animal. I sent my eye running along the spine of a thing, felt it warm and alive, arching its back into my palm. I moved my eye like I'd move my hand, stroking an edge, pressing against the body of a mass.
Rubber Tourniquets
| January 4, 2021 My four-year-old son plays with the blue rubber tourniquet from his latest hospitalization. A nurse tied it around his arm to insert an IV into the tender part of his forearm near the crook of his elbow.
You Should Ask for More
| December 28, 2020 "Am I sad?" I ask my dog, because it's not something I recognize anymore. Sadness had come so thick and urgent for a while that the quieter emotions don't register like they used to.
Car Keys
| December 21, 2020 “I can drive today,” my partner said, and I tossed him the keys over the hood of my 1999 Jeep Cherokee. Up went the key to my mom’s house, which opened a small home of wall-papered, floral prints and a retired woman shuffling in a bathrobe, slowing sipping coffee . . .
The Ledge
| December 14, 2020 We've come to Switzerland and we're in love. It's the crisp air, the towering waterfalls and majestic peaks – a guise to hide the death that lurks behind the exquisite landscape where we've flocked to feel alive.
Real Mom
| December 7, 2020 Until I decided to come to Korea, I hadn't realized how special my mother was – how selfless, how enlightened. Most adoptive parents of her generation can't understand that searching for our origins isn't a direct affront to them. In truth, it has nothing to do with them at all.
Jars of Daybreak
| November 30, 2020 Roused before dawn, my siblings and I stood at the edge of the kitchen and marveled at gleaming red jars that filled the room. Our parents shuffled wordlessly from stove to kitchen table and back again, their bright faces like blacksmiths' flushed by forge light . . .
After Hours
| November 23, 2020 My grandfather wakes, confused and flooded with his body's toxins. "Sit down," he tells my grandmother. "We're going around a bend." He thinks they're on the train forty years ago. He reaches for invisible handholds . . .
The China Tea Set
| November 16, 2020 The china tea set, wrapped in tissue paper, nestles in its warped cardboard box on the shelf inside my mother's wardrobe. She draws it down gently, as though not to wake it, places it on the bed, slides the lid off.
Photograph
| November 9, 2020 I push through the brambles and climb over the rotting, peeling fence that inevitably grabs at the cuff of my pants. Getting snagged, I always seem to fall cursing onto the beach, an unfitting way to enter the quiet beauty.
A Good Day to Die
| November 2, 2020 What I remember is the salt that formed in his pores like crystalline grains of sand. A million tiny specks covering his skin. Everywhere, everywhere, everywhere. The hospice nurse said that this meant his sweat glands were shutting down, squeezing out the last drops of his life.
The door with the fresh coat of turquoise paint and brass hinges
| October 26, 2020 I open the door to see if you're there, the door with the fresh coat of turquoise paint and brass hinges. There is a noise, a constant; it could be the rain or the thick of my heart in my eardrums. I've never heard this sound before . . .
The Hart
| October 19, 2020 He steps out of the grass like a god. Thick necked to hold up east-to-west spanning antlers which in turn hold up the entire sky, three clouds and a Northern Harrier. I am caught off guard by his emergence, how he comes from nothing into everything.
Grandmom's House
| October 12, 2020 Our house was like a radio playing six stations at once: brothers arguing, piano keys banging, lawn mowing, blender blending, phone ringing, dog barking. Stepping inside Grandmom's house was like that moment at the YMCA swimming pool when you duck your head under water and all the noise gets muffled and feels far away.
Before the First Frost
| October 5, 2020 The yellowed aspen leaves shimmer like so many pennies against the setting sun, almost frantic in their last-dance enthusiasm for the night's forecasted hard frost. Your neighbor's forgotten garden has little to offer: one ghostly chalk-colored squash that just a few weeks ago was a cheerful orange trumpet blossom.
Waste Not
| September 28, 2020 My parents are old and inert, their bones want only to be still. There's not much we can do for entertainment, except sit here, and then for a change of scenery, sit there.
Flicker
| September 21, 2020 I watch her snap the skateboard's tail to the street just like her boyfriend does, mount it, one foot at a time, steady herself and roll to the corner. Her right foot steps off, kicks twice, three times, she accelerates, wheels click on the sidewalk's seams.
Mom's Nighty
| September 14, 2020 I started wearing Mom's nighty after she died. “You don’t remember?” Grandma asks. “You used to spray her perfume on ribbons.” Pink fills my skull. Satin dipped in distilled forget-me-nots. Little boy fingers tying bracelets around small wrists.
Black Hair Matters
| September 7, 2020 My toddler grandchild sits still on the carpet between my knees, her back cushioned against the sofa. I consider detangling her springy hair coils. Should I fix her hair similar to the way my mother did mine? Most school mornings, she would twist my bristly hair into a short, thick braid.
The Greatest Unease
| August 31, 2020 Flying over deep water in the inscrutable dark. We are doomed. I hear the pilot slur his words. My neck is stiff. I feel a headache coming on. My legs begin to cramp. The anxiety pills make me nauseous. The line for the loo snakes down the aisle. The plane begins to jerk.
He Gave Her the Honey-Sweet Berry of the Pomegranate to Eat
| August 24, 2020 In the produce aisle, I consider genetically modified pomegranates: ruby globes that overflow my palms cupped together. But the one I choose to bring home I pluck with my thumb and forefinger. Pitted and tawny, my pomegranate looks like what it is: a seed pod . . .
Your Dad's Not Here
| August 17, 2020 “You don’t have to go in, Mom,” my son said through the phone. I was standing on the porch, holding the phone, and knocking on his dad’s door.
Fog
| August 10, 2020 Low-slung fog canvasses our narrow valley. The film of haze blurs the trees, rubbing out their distinct edges. As if the forest is fine print and I am trying to read it without my glasses. This morning I awoke thinking of my old brown mare . . .
Footfall
| August 3, 2020 The black, four-inch stilettos with pointed toes were a gift, so I tried to be polite as I thought of a kind way to say: Hell no. Then I looked at his happy, hopeful face and knew I would learn to wear them.
Convergence
| July 27, 2020 Rain falling on the cabin roof isn't music or balm or metaphor. For two days and two nights, it's nothing but water saturating the stairs I descend in the dark to go to the outhouse while my husband sleeps.
False Spring
| July 20, 2020 Fourteen cedar waxwings cluster in the apple tree. The bright February sun sharpens their dark masks and perky crests as they bounce from branch to branch devouring the rotted fruit beakful by beakful until the apples hang in tatters.
Two Forms
| July 13, 2020 Henry Moore's bronze sculpture Large Two Forms sits like a pair of discarded vertebrae on the pavement outside the art gallery, where small children clamber and slide through its round openings on their bellies and backsides. Teenagers, too, are drawn to these primal shapes.
Stream
| July 6, 2020 I want to believe that the first song I heard came from my mother. She sang "Moon River" while putting me to bed. I'm crossing you in style someday. What was that river of the moon?
Airview
| June 29, 2020 My father decided he wanted an airview, a photograph of our summer home taken from a tiny plane on a clear, bright day. In these pictures, the skies are always blue and the houses have been carefully groomed like children for class pictures . . .
Fear of Poetry
| June 22, 2020 My beloved friend dying of cancer said she’d been afraid of poetry for too long. I suggested a poetry party. A university lecturer, Susan was inspirational whether she was talking Jane Austen or freshman composition.
