Gather. Discover. Cultivate.
“You’re doing your best,” they say. You nod, you shrug. Okay, sure.
Inside, you sneer.
“Your best” belongs to brighter days. Not so far off, those days, but somehow also remote. Like they belong to someone else.
Best You learned things. Made decisions snap-snap. Took on the project. Invited people into your home. Best You learned a new language, the names of trees, how to roll sushi, and the most exhilarating route through Manhattan by bike.
The instructions said
to lay it deep
six weeks at least
before last frost.
You followed the steps
more or less.
Don’t call.
That’s the only thing. Do anything else at all.
But don’t call.
Eat too much peanut butter. Water the plants. Walk the dog in the pouring rain.
Don’t call.
Empty the suitcase. Start the laundry. Place the new pottery dish in its place.
Think about him again.
Don’t call. Continue reading “Listen Instead”
You hold everything you need
In the bowl of your hands
They say.
I’m racing for the light. The flashing orange hand counts down. On the other side of the street waits the supermarket where I’ll load up on almond milk and broccoli before hurrying back across to pick up my son at school. Still twenty yards away, my legs groan in resistance. The backpack chafes my shoulders. I curse under my breath.
When did reaching the other side of the street rise to such prominence in the pantheon of meaning? What is it I hope will happen when I achieve this singular purpose? In all likelihood, the produce section will revert to its simple functionality. Cinderella’s pumpkin at the twelfth stroke. I’ll grab what I need and try to outrun the lady with the full cart who’s headed for the short checkout line. The purchases will turn into a hasty dinner and an even hastier breakfast. At the office tomorrow, I’ll hustle through tasks, trying to stay a step ahead of the next item on the list. Then I’ll dash out to catch the metro in time to catch the bus in time to make it to my son’s school in time to pick him up at after care in time to go home and have dinner and do it all over again.
Then and this. Now and here.
A pause.
Cool air shivers skin. The bus engine grumbles below plastic seats molded to cup a human’s soft places. Thighs of meat padding bone. Outside, women in a pack bustle down the sidewalk in jeans stretched taut.
The days grow shorter.
Even so, I forget. Forget to stop and touch the zinnia with its five shades of orange tethered to a center like chocolate. Forget to let the crepe myrtle dip across my cheek. Barely notice a fat bee chugging past me towards what bursts from the hedges. A body that should be too weighty for the tissue of wings somehow stays airborne.
I forget that eventually, everything falls. I forget to catch drift.
They call it urge surfing.
I call it swimming against the Gulf Stream
Naked
In the dead of night.
Two months, no tears.
Drought or deluge?
Touch the earth.
Watch the sky.
Image: Yoel Tordjman, “i will go by fire and water”
Numb is a verb
posing as a state.
It shelters a pupa
from the abrading throat
of daybreak. It allows a wing
to knit
itself
into itself.
This is how to stop
time
while time
ticks on
until sensation returns
which
incredible
as it seems
it always
does.
—
Photo credit: 6legs2many
Put it on ice
at first
to keep the swelling down.
Pain masked
is the absence of pain. The mind
is both
trickster
and patsy.
Play.
It’s game. Continue reading “Still Move Through”
Shannon E. Williams 