May 15, 2023
There is a photo of my husband and me on the mantle. We are young. We are smiling. My front tooth has not begun shifting over top of the other.
This is something that no one else notices but me.
Today I lifted my arm to put on a shirt and the underside wiggled- as if the skin was a bow released.
My grandmother carried the same, exhausted skin. She was much older than I am now.
Time is not elastic.
I will learn to make peace with the things I hate about my own body-the crooked tooth, the crow’s feet, the skin undefined. Because down the hallway lives my daughter, who has come back from a war with herself.
She is her own abductor and hostage. She’s negotiating her own terms. She’s rescuing herself.
We will start living in the haunted house or we will sell it.
It doesn’t make a difference to the ghosts.
June 12, 2023
The chrysalis opened overnight- undressing itself in the dark. We awake to the sound of wings-like a child with a new instrument.
One of the butterflies is lying on the floor- trapped within itself. All day long he beats his broken wings ferociously.
I try to remove the chrysalis like bubblegum from a child’s hair.
Strength is disguised in gentleness just as often as it’s revealed in force.
I bury the broken body in the garden.
Tonight I will sleep beneath the weight of winged things and my father will come to me in dreams to tell me has forgiven me for ending his life.
I never decided his life. I only ever decided his death.
Broken things are like ghosts that follow you from place to place.
And who can haunt you better than yourself?
July 14, 2023
All week long, the birds have been flying low- casting shadows in the headlights. The road ahead is chalked with the colors of groundhogs and squirrels.
Nobody is mourning their brief histories. There are no funerals in nature. Grieving is limited to location.
There is a dead fox lying on the side of the road. Something catches in my throat each time that I drive past.Like a fishhook, lodged sideways.
Pain doesn’t ever dull, it only rusts.
There will be no rescue. I’ll have to learn to breathe around it.
I spend my days moving worms off of sidewalks and filling bowls of cat food on porches.
I have convinced myself that this is the only magic there is- loving the world despite how broken it is.
July 14, 202
This morning the car that was following me through the neighborhood pulled up beside me at a stop sign and the driver gave me the middle finger because I was following the speed limit.
My twelve year old daughter was in the passenger seat.
He didn’t know that she was coming home from having repeat lab work drawn to make sure that she is still in recovery. He doesn’t understand how triggering lab work can be after months of having her blood drawn multiple times a day and during the night.
When he looked at her, he didn’t see a fighter. He saw an inconvenience.
I wonder if he understands what it’s like to watch your daughter disappear-to spend months chasing down the magician.
I am not immune to rage. But I’ve learned to pull my fingers back from the sparkler.
All we are is stories. Nobody gets to break us with illiteracy.
July 14, 2023
Today in the forest, you found a pink rock beside a stream that you were so enchanted by, you refused to leave it behind. In your excitement, you dropped the rock into the water and it disappeared.
You thought about the rock all day long.
A few summers ago, we found a creature, dead on the beach. You asked to bring it home with us. I told you that its spirit belonged to the sea.
For months afterwards, I could hear you crying in your room.
Your capacity to mourn loss, at such a young age, is extraordinary.
The pink pebble is gone, sailing to another sea. And you’ve got a lifetime ahead of you of discovering beautiful things.
You will lose just as much as you collect.
We must go on loving this world, even the parts we cannot keep.
Nothing is ours forever.
August 6, 2023
This afternoon you called out to me because you found a beetle drowning in a bowl of water that we had left out for the cats. I cupped him gently in my hands and laid him down upon the porch.
All summer long, our kindness was a lifeboat. We dodged a drought but mapped out a drowning.
The beetle lay sideways in the space between us- existing somewhere in between flight and surrender.
In the corner, there was a ladybug trapped in a spider’s web. You asked me to save its life.
For you, I became a thief- robbing the spider of its next meal. The ladybug crawled away, as if she had already forgotten her capture.
The beetle lies in the grass, its copper colored body looking up at me like a penny.
I have lost more things than I have ever saved.
I keep trying.
August 15, 2023
Driving down roads that I have memorized like a speech. There is a dead fox rotting on the shoulder.
We put a man on the moon but can’t be bothered to bury the dead.
Our destinies owe us our dignities.
Summer left like a lover. I slid down the stairs and it was September.
The sky stays on fire. We’ve been hiding under blankets. Having conversations like “Why did Allison have to change at the end of the Breakfast Club?” And “What would it be like to listen to your favorite album for the first time all over again?” And “Would everything be different if you knew you were doing something for the last time?”
You told me Lady Bird sold out at the end of the film. I said she finally understood where she came from.
From now on, there will be funerals for foxes beneath volcanic skies and every daisy in between will burn with love.
Because all of it matters.
September 10, 2023
First week of September. The air is so hot that the birds are sleeping in the feeder.
There is little relief in hiding from the thing that hurts you.
Across the street, the neighbors are arguing- their voices bouncing off of one another like rubber balls.
Is that what a relationship is? Dismantling something perfect, piece by piece, year by year? Correcting one another until the end of time?
We drive through the neighborhood- a desert with houses. My daughter sighs and says she’s sad because in one of the houses, there’s an old lady eating dinner alone.
Maybe one day we won’t notice. Maybe someday we’ll only look ahead. And we’ll stop imagining how much better the world should be.
The curtain has been drawn between childhood and the rest of our lives.
I thought that there would be more magic than this.
October 2, 2023
Orange
Driving home from work, chasing the daylight that’s left. The sky is so orange, it looks like a Polaroid. The afternoon feels like it’s 1984.
Everything that I have unlearned was just as valuable as the lesson.
In the backseat there is a bucket filled with things that my daughter has been collecting. She’s been measuring her days with acorns and sticks.
“The Ghost in You” is playing on the radio. You told me once that the Great Pumpkin was a tragedy. Watching Lucy carry Linus back home and tuck him in bed broke your heart.
I’ve been watching the days pass by like a carousel- drowning with pinecones and pebbles. The horses remain earthbound-never lifting their hooves above these golden fields.
Freedom is not beneath us. It is within us.
October 30, 2023
Safe
We stand in a parking lot- a stranger and me- waiting for a fire truck to arrive.
“I’m having a really bad day,” she says, waving to her granddaughter, who is locked inside the car.
It’s warm for October. I put my jacket over the window to block the sun.
“Help is coming,” we tell her. We take turns pacing and smiling.
The men strategically surround her, shouting instructions through the glass. She can’t hear them. She just looks up at us and returns our smiles.
She’s locked inside a seat, which is locked inside a car. The thing that was supposed to keep her safe instead has trapped her.
Later I won’t remember the shade of her dress, only the flush of her cheeks once she was free.
Can you keep a secret?
I rescued her because I understand how she feels.
November 30, 2023
Sad
“All of it is sad,” she says, referring to my work.
“Nobody writes when they’re happy,” I say. And after all, isn’t melancholy a love affair with rainy days?
Every animal on the roadside is immortal because of me. I waste nothing. There is no scrap of life that I cannot preserve.
I carve puppets out of missed opportunities and make them dance.
I mourn all of it. I hold funerals for sparrows and moths. I house an infinite capacity to love within my bones.
I honor stories. That is my marrow.
Not all of us are archers. Some of us are seals. And grief leaves its scars, even after the net is cut off our necks.
Love leaves just as many scars as grief.
So I will go on loving ghosts.
December 11, 2023
Today
Today, I watched two squirrels chasing one another down an alley. A couple, wearing gloves, walking hand-in-hand on a stone path. A man on a motorcycle, swerving on the road to music inaudible to me. A father carrying his daughter on his shoulders, walking down a street under construction. Snow falling quietly on autumn leaves. A stray cat stalking a sparrow. A girl with wet hair, walking to school. A man with the car window down, smoking a cigarette.
We are born wrapped up in our own selves.
All we are is constantly unfolding.
December 28, 2023
Paperclips
It’s the first day of winter. Nothing gold can stay. Autumn is a carnival in the rear view mirror. Tonight will be the longest night of the year.
A girl with tattoos across her face walks down the street. A plastic skeleton is lying in the middle of the road. A man in a pick up truck is collecting the dead deer who are lying along the grass.
Grief is its own country. Not all of us are capable of moving the dead.
I heard a story once about a girl who jumped out a window on the fourth floor to hide from her lover’s wife. Afterwards, I realized-there is nobody in this world who I would break my body for.
Crows bring treasures to the people they become attached to. Paperclips and buttons become devotions.
When you rescue a deer, sometimes they come back. Because everyone who is broken can be tamed.
Eventually they will drown in the same frozen lake.
Instinct is stronger than memory.