Blog : Beautiful-Things
Clementine Time
| October 7, 2019 There is no time but the time in the kitchen. My father loses track of days, and I buy a "clock" whose only hand moves from Monday to Tuesday to Wednesday, as if distinguishing between the days were important.
Simplify, Simplify
| September 30, 2019 This could be the morning I slide out the door instead of back under sheets and escape before I drink my coffee. My arms unburdened, no one calling me back, no shame or remorse to shadow my escape. Away.
Chosen for Something
| September 23, 2019 Sometimes as a child I would brush my grandfather's thinning hair. He was a long haul trucker turned Pentecostal preacher who mostly showed affection through prayer and cash money, both of which he handed out at random to his grandkids.
Footfalls
| September 16, 2019 On the plane home, out the window, all I see is empty sky. As a girl, when talk of dying arose, I always gazed up to where I am now, drifting past the tops of snowy clouds.
Sneakers in Sand (repeat)
| September 9, 2019 The baby's shoes were nowhere. That morning was spent in the chaotic swirl of cleaning and packing the vacation house
Ritual (repeat)
| September 2, 2019 Most nights I nurse my four-month-old daughter to sleep. The internet connection is terrible in our bedroom, the light thrown by the little green glass lamp not enough to read by, so I end up sitting in the semi-dark, looking across the bed to the window, or down upon the face of my baby in her steady, drowsy pleasure.
Mars and a Reflection of Mars (repeat)
| August 26, 2019 "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.
The End of the Movie (repeat)
| August 19, 2019 Today: summer afternoon on the front porch as thunderheads grow over the top of a giant oak. In the yard you perform perfect cartwheels, your legs long and straight in the air.
Bare, Naked (repeat)
| August 12, 2019 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, unsnap my bra, pull my sweatshirt over my head, lay my folded clothes on my shoes.
The Teacups (repeat)
| August 5, 2019 At the boardwalk, everything is past its prime: sweating hot dogs, mashed bags of cotton candy, melting ice cream. The workers move by rote--lifting and lowering the gate, pulling up on harnesses, scanning tickets. I slump in line.
Playboy (repeat)
| July 29, 2019 When my mother caught Chris and me looking at Playboy, we knew we were in trouble, but to my surprise she did not get angry. She took me into the house and pulled out the large glossy art books with paintings by the Impressionists.
Stand Up Tall
| July 22, 2019 My father turns his head, puts me on the floor, opens the screen, and walks out the back door. Just the silhouette of the bare trees shadowing night's sky is all I can see. I stand there for long minutes listening as night whispers peace.
Those Days
| July 15, 2019 In 1976, when you were still alive, I wrecked my car on 14th Street in D.C. on our first date.
Rocks
| July 8, 2019 Gravel dots her fingertips, her knees, the edges of her yellow dress. She runs along the parked RV, the sun hanging low above its roof. She bends and picks up a pebble; it stretches along the small of her hands. Her arm cocks back as she eyes me, smiles.
His Pockets (repeat)
| July 1, 2019 At four he is an earnest collector. He keeps his secrets in his pockets and leaves them for me in the laundry basket. As I unroll the cuffs of his too-long-yet pants, sand dribbles out, a clump of mud caking the cloth. Even if all is quiet, I remain cautious.
Lightening Up (repeat)
| June 24, 2019 My brother and I grab hold of dangling metal chains fastened to schoolyard swings in this expanse of crabgrass, red dirt, goalposts, and hard bleachers, where he'd slapped the face of the sky with baseballs all those years ago, where I'd ducked every flying thing....
Rocket Scientist (repeat)
| June 17, 2019 As a child, when adults asked what I wanted to be when I grew up, I had plenty of answers, but they all sounded like Halloween costumes. Race-car driver. Astronaut. Olympic track star....
Missing (repeat)
| June 11, 2019 You have been ours for ten months, and tomorrow, the state will return you to your mother.
Kinetic Energy (repeat)
| June 3, 2019 Blankets and coolers and lesbians covered every inch across an entire city block. We idled atop dense grass, my head resting in her lap as she leaned back on her palms...
The Dying Room
| May 27, 2019 When he woke again he questioned how had he come to be here in this terrible room, who had allowed it to happen?
A Perceivable Soul
| May 20, 2019 The last time we saw her, two weeks before she died, her dementia seemed to have taken everything from her. The traits we thought particularly hers were no longer visible to us.
Like Breath, Like Doors
| May 13, 2019 I woke at 3 a.m. to what sounded like a barking seal. It was my husband—teeth chattering, too weak to stand, and too confused to speak.
How to Leave Without Saying Goodbye
| May 6, 2019 Remember that afternoon you asked me to be your accomplice, your getaway driver, your ticket to freedom?
The Art of Icebergs
| April 29, 2019 In Jokusarlon Lagoon, at the edge of Vatnajokull, Iceland's largest glacier, ten of us and Erik, our guide, bounce bounce bounce in a Zodiac boat. We are here to see icebergs, calves of the glacier, chunks that break off and fall into the water.
What Dreams May Come
| April 22, 2019 If it wasn't for me, maybe he'd still be dreaming. When I told my Dad I wanted to live forever, he said, "Just wait 'till you get to be my age, then you'll wish you were dead." I was eight. He was twenty-eight. He was always joking, never kidding.
Family Portrait
| April 15, 2019 Yesterday, when I was riding the train north from Chicago, back to the suburb where I live, I happened to look up from the newspaper I was reading just as the tracks veered up alongside the back of a faded brown brick building, where I saw two children seated at a kitchen table in one of its windows....
Cold (repeat)
| April 8, 2019 On the hottest days in San Vicente, I sit on the front porch of my host family's house, sweat dripping from under my arms, dust turning to mud on my salt-streaked legs.
Peaches (repeat)
| April 1, 2019 The peach's soft flesh is so barely protected by its thin and fuzzy skin that I think it can't possibly be serious, but rather a jubilant sunburst, radiant and unworried in the brief noon of its summered existence, simply satisfied with the bright sweetness of its being....
Jesus, the Wonder Bread of Life
| March 25, 2019 Mom gave me the idea, an object lesson given to her as a girl. "Pass it around," I said to my Mormon Bible study class. After a pause, the other preteens passed around the slice of Wonder Bread....
Perennial
| March 18, 2019 Yesterday my uncle Russ, my dad's older brother, texted me a video of a peony bush in bloom. The plant isn't his—he left the farm where it grows, in the remains of his mother's garden, to become a middle-school band director a half-century ago. But he can't stop tending things, a dogged farmer....
