I wasn’t going to write about this but here is a super short summary of what has been going on with me this week, which I will type up really quickly, share on Twitter, and then never look at again for all eternity.
Page 12 of 45
there is a minute, literally sixty seconds
or less
when the knife you’re using at dinner
looks inviting
sharper than a butter knife, not quite
a steak knife
enough to elicit something red that just
for a minute
feels like a solution, despite you never
taking it seriously
before, despite your wrist’s resistance,
your arm
thinks maybe, your skin thinks maybe,
somewhere
in the back of your mind a tiny voice
says maybe,
but you keep cutting up your chicken,
finish eating,
take your plate into the kitchen, put
the cutlery
in the dishwasher, let the thought
slip away
as quietly and unnoticeably as it came.
(I never have, and I won’t. It was just a minute. Please don’t worry.)
Note to self, and other selves who try to put their own feelings on shelves hidden behind a curtain, where they’re certain it won’t occur to other people to look.
4,000 miles away from my own doormat, after a long day of co-ordinating the salt in my nails with the sand in my teeth, I whisper “please, no letters” into my American pillow, as if there were anything it could possibly do to stop the consultant, to stop the admin clerk, to stop the sorting office staff, to stop the postman, to stop time.
The other day I tweeted about trying to be mindful while I am on holiday. I’m in my favourite place in the world, Orlando, Florida, and I know that when I get home my two week holiday is going to feel like a distant memory. When I have gotten home after a holiday in the past, I have felt unhappy to not still be here, and wondered if I appreciated it while I was here. Did I stop and look around enough? Did I take stock of where I was? Did I stop racing around and think about where I was, look at the trees, get up early and enjoy the quiet, listen to all the sounds – the crickets, the park music? Did I smell all the smells – the food, the weirdly sweet smell of the air, the clean smell of the hotel room? Did I appreciate the hot weather, then coming in to the air conditioning? Did I use my time off work to my full advantage?
When a prologue is both a pep talk and a dedication letter to the dead
I spend the first morning eavesdropping on the birds, carefully noting each inflection, every declaration. They trust me to handle this information with complete accuracy:
too, too
too… too too
whi whi whi whi whi whi
too too too too too
hoo-hoo-hoo-hoo-hoo-hoo-hoo-
hoo-hoo-hoo-hoo-hoo-gasp-hoo-
hoo-hoo-hoo-hoo
thp-thp-thp-thp-thp-thp
The meaning of this compilation of sounds is top secret.
A lone duck goes about its important business in shallowing waters. It appears there has been a drought here, but it is the place that makes me feel the most full, in many ways. Welcome home. There are only good things here.
Working on a piece of prose about my late brother while watching Iron Man 2, and the only thing that brings a slight tear to my eye all evening is Iron Man’s dad telling him posthumously that his son was his greatest creation. Well, fuck. I’ll cry at a fictional character’s grief before I cry at my own.
The day smells like yellow with a hint of blue
and you look like petrichor –
a little misty around the edges
a haze following you
and who am I, I ask,
now the whisky has stopped
obstructing my view
who are we, in this fresh
morning with dew on our lips,
beads of it at the ends of our hair
and who will we turn into after
noon, when the sun is burning loudly
when our eyes can’t block out the noise
and my hands still smell like your voice
I breathe you in
and wonder if your mouth still
feels like how I looked the night before
spongey with alcohol and thirst
stretched with smiles and open, wild
tongue trying to dampen the fuzzy inside
of your cheek, like dew trying to reach
a dandelion seed
