home.

my first "boyfriend" was a tiny frat boy named tim. he was eleven or twelve, junior high. i was rounding that corner myself. we rode the bus together. a mutual friend who sat on the back bench of the bus as it hugged the rounded edges of the concrete road toward our condo complex asked for my phone number. to give to tim. he called me ten minutes after i got home. ten minutes of pacing back and forth, staring at the open refrigerator, eating three chocolate chip cookies. when he called, i pretended to be fourteen. because fourteen seemed like it knew what it was doing. he asked me to "go" with him. i said yes. and we hung up. the next day i ignored him. the day after that we stopped "going together." my first relationship was checked off the list. i felt successful, jaded, improperly mature.

::

i was always a bit of a late bloomer.

::

the first time i spent time alone with bryan, there was a shift. tectonic or magnetic. throw me chemistry or spirituality or destiny or time and place and i will smile at you and nod accordingly. yes, yes. and yes. yes.

we sat under a tree, surrounded by grass and we barely spoke. i imagined i was fourteen. times two. and then some. i showed my hand. i went all in. eyes closed and wide open, underwater and still breathing. i meant everything i said and my actions followed suit. i was the winning hand you always heard about. it was magic. 

::

seven years later and i am now the aftermath of the royal flush. i am the old wives' tale, the fable. the bedtime story. i am home. 

photo/august 2013

conversations

she holds an archaic, non-working cell phone up to her ear and walks around the living room in circles, hands touching random objects here and there. a finger on a plant leaf. her wrist on the edge of a book.

no, i actually have a daughter. not a son. nope. no son.
i have a necklace. not a bracelet. how about something else, then?
how about something, like, oh! i have to call you back.

when she puts the phone down, her just turned two year old brother picks it up and she reaches for it. he screams and she shakes her head.

i'm not done talking, yet, bubba.

he looks at her and hands it over. she drops it on the ground.

HOLD ON! she picks it up and and wipes off the back of the phone.
oh, good, you're still there. 
i have two one dollar bills. that's it. no, no, that's it. i'm going to have to call you back. 

numbers pushed. the two year old yells byyyyyyyeeeeeee. byyyyyyyyyeeeeeeeee. 
she retreats through the hallway and her voice re-enters before she does.

can you hear me? okay, good. we can do that tomorrow. no! (pause) no, i did not do it yet. i'll do it tomorrow. i don't know what you said yesterday. yes! yes, i can. i can do it all by myself. you will be proud of this. okay, no i can't, i have to call you back.

i am the stenographer sitting idly on the side, posture with purpose. i grab one end of the ticker tape and rewind it and loop it across the room, across the chandelier. i close my eyes and open the doors. listen to the wind rush over the loamy words scattered at the shore. the random machinations of her mind are unfiltered, spongy, amplified. she says them out loud without even realizing it and i know that my days witnessing the inside of her brain are numbered. that i better listen while i can.

beginnings. and endings.

today was as good a day as any to die, i suppose.

::

a good friend's mom suffered a brain aneurysm. another close friend has a brother in a coma, brain swelling, body broken. my daughter started kindergarten and when she exited the class on the first day, she was sobbing hysterically, her eyes wide and arms overrun with a too large backpack, unzipped and spilling its contents. i felt a pound of flesh detach itself and land on the grass, subcutaneous fat butchered and jagged. these transitions, they sometimes exact a toll.

::

i outgrew my old writing space, i think. or it outgrew me. regardless, i would find myself there, fingers wanting to write and yet i couldn't do it. it didn't feel like me anymore. perhaps this is just a nod to the days when i would buy a new journal after a major period of transition in my life. a way to mark the occasion.


::


i haven't spoken to him in ten years. not since that email on my thirtieth birthday where i cried like i was twelve and emailed him back to ask him politely to never contact me again. he didn't. so there is that. he died today. at least that is what facebook tells me. (a sleuthing of sorts reveals an online death certificate so it seems to be true.) and i don't know how to feel about this. now that the day is here, i mean. even though he was sort of dead to me in a very metaphorical sense. i suppose i should feel free. or angry. happy. relieved. confused. mostly i feel deflated. the same way i feel on the fourth of july or new year's eve. like the anticipation was for something so much greater. the actual event is a sort of non-committal act of passive resistance. i feel like i should feel more than i do.

::

my son turned two today. so i suppose more than a good day to die, it is a good to celebrate being alive.

::

i wish my step-father peace. since he never seemed to have it here.