A customer’s total was 444.

How do I seem to so graciously make the day for them and not have it for myself? “God bless you”, another one says.

He comes home from a long night of work in this hot week of monsoons and concerts. “I don’t like mirrors…. I like reflections,” he says dreamily, stoned from our couch. Mirrors bounce a trained idea of oneself. But reflections cannot lie.

He tells me to believe in this goodness that we have made, that we are making. So hard that I do. It’s contagious, this reflection.

Four of wands; flipped upright by my own resolute resolve.

/As a woman, I have no country/ I am materials. Silk, cotton and linen and scratch. New freckles on my shoulders and down my back he points out; the rakish fat squirrel on the roof. Chirping like a smoke detector on low battery. We love him, and I think he knows it.

Tarot cards; five of pentacles, once up, once reversed.

Dripping moonwax on the streets; my bitten nails and browned arms; the greys that catch in my rearview mirror like smoke signals.

A man crossing the street to catch a bus; leaning into a walker, his shuffle, eyes catch in each car waiting in our shame of youth. Later, a black widow on my bike wheel. Written words on a bay leaf to burn with three other women in the mountain somewhere far enough and near, laughing as I write Paul Simon lyrics from my mushroom head. Witchy shit; he laughs at me the next day. Yes, both.

/Why deny the obvious child?/

Lists and screenshots of books to front list order now that I have returned to the land of the living. Bath sweat on my lip; a bruise behind my calf, hard and quartered.

What to do in the heat of root rot? We cry so suddenly over new coffee and a quick friendship. “I learned to orient toward curiosity instead of fear”, she says with light in her contagious eyes. My silk shirt dripping in the morning sweat. Smiling.

The candle burning on the table at night; me and the moon and the candle, the pink light washing everything until nothing is nothing but cotton candy.

I am a theatre stage ghost light in July.

Work on your reports. Review
each of your life’s ten million choices. Endure moments
of self-loathing. Find the evidence of those before you.
Destroy it. Try to be very quiet, and listen for the sound
of gears and moving water. Listen for the sound of your heart.
Be thankful that you are here, swallowed with all hope,
where you can rest and wait. Things to Do in the Belly of the Whale
-Dan Albergotti

The dish sink is giving off a smell that pulls and tugs throughout this evening. I cannot find the source; resolved to pour baking soda and vinegar into the pit and pray.

I could not hold a class on writing, I lament. I could not manage a shop. But still here we are. And still. I could, and I even do sometimes. I am resting.

It is dark outside tonight; a new moon, which means that it may very well be in the belly of itself.

It is cancer season, we hear. A cancer new moon. a softness inside the hard shell of the whole. Or so I’m told and feel deep in my little moon bones.

This morning I got there early, as there was much pressure around this appointment. There is a hard world outside that may very well be waiting for me, or it very well may be my self-made fear, and how I cannot see from in this dark belly of myself. A crab trapped in thinking sideways thoughts.

/It’s all in your head, and I said, so is everything, but he didn’t get it/ -Fiona Apple

This morning I saw into into that deep. I saw that I had healed. They said that I am ready once again, if we would like to try once again.

These seasons of myself, in which the softness is so very much my make. The squish sensitivities. The sadness that comes from so deep that even an ultrasound cannot find it. The Irish embrace it, I am told.

Last night I dreamt that I knew how to become invisible. Then, I feared that others knew the recipe as well, and so I could never truly know if I was alone.

Turning my innards outwards; a lobster tail, split/cracked/buttered.

I am in this belly, and there is nothing to do until I can see the bright side of the moon, except count the small victories.

Hold the vessel; do not break the vessel. Tell me what to do with my hands.

Catalog these lucid dreams of the dead.

Organize my nostalgia.

Unclog the sink.

This slap from tonight, (thank you Erin ). Here’s the whole tug:

Things to Do in the Belly of the Whale
Dan Albergotti

Measure the walls. Count the ribs. Notch the long days.
Look up for blue sky through the spout. Make small fires
with the broken hulls of fishing boats. Practice smoke signals.
Call old friends, and listen for echoes of distant voices.
Organize your calendar. Dream of the beach. Look each way
for the dim glow of light. Work on your reports. Review
each of your life’s ten million choices. Endure moments
of self-loathing. Find the evidence of those before you.
Destroy it. Try to be very quiet, and listen for the sound
of gears and moving water. Listen for the sound of your heart.
Be thankful that you are here, swallowed with all hope,
where you can rest and wait. Be nostalgic. Think of all
the things you did and could have done. Remember
treading water in the center of the still night sea, your toes
pointing again and again down, down into the black depths.

Pads, Cheese, Wine, American spirits, Ultrasound?

This week:

email Doctor C, Cost of stay, Cost of meds, work schedule

My friend at work found a small duck figurine on one of the bookshelves. It was the same duck figurine that I put in my pocket while cleaning out my Grandma’s room. I ask how, but I know. Today, I am jostled by the car struts that I have not fixed, and wouldn’t know where to start even if it was closer to the top of priorities. I’m only driving a small bit, because I am resting. It is hard to rest. I am wearing a hospital pad to drop off some bags at savers and maybe find a few treasures walking the aisle slowly. What is it about this life that keeps surprising us? Do we think it will someday just smooth out like the Froya ads I keep getting? No, I will not buy your Icelandic face paste. I will, however, buy into magic. Full moon week. Listening to the body and knowing something needs to be fixed. Swirling it together with the signs. Leaning vulnerably into medicine and the help.

Nurses are a comfort in ways untrainable in those daunting and arduous courses. They don’t know that that 4 AM tea in a Styrofoam cup after hours being scared in the ER will warm me in the dark, and they don’t know that soft touch feels so human it breaks a person after such sterile needles in every vein has not yet. That the one wheeling me to pre-op telling me that this is just a blip in my life and that there will be so much more after this part was too much to answer to, so I just looked up. Us laughing about seeing each other at the Rufus Wainwright show in two weeks time.

When I was in Home Economics in ninth grade, we learned how to make spaghetti, how to sew a pillowcase, how to find out if we were a winter or an autumn. Yes, I am glad that I learned how to read and write cursive. I still can read my grandma’s letters and cards. I wish they had told us, however, about the blood. And the discomfort one will carry. And the way it doesnt fit in like a glove. It spills out into plans and dreams. It is ungodly messy. We talk of expectations and how maybe the whole point is to really realize that they are so light.

Things keep circling. He tells me that the birds sing in the morning because the air is clear enough that their voice can travel best. There was a fire last night at the old schoolhouse in the old cemetery just down the street. The air is clear today. Enough. Wounds heal. Bruises fade. What is left? The lightness?

There is much to be serious about. Small duck figurines. Giant hospital pads. The state of America on her birthday.

Something about right now carries magic. Is it clear? Is it light? Maybe because it is finally July. Everything feels like morning.

Keep your heads up.

Blips.

My burning eyes left Santa Fe at sunrise, and at 2 o’clock I stood in the fluorescent community room and spoke into a microphone. I wore a grey cotton t shirt, jeans that were rain-soaked from the night before at the Fruit Bats show.

I said how lucky I feel that so many of my stories of my Grandma are inappropriate jokes. I laughed. I ate a cupcake, likely covered in old person dust and cough, and tried not to look too long at anything. The crusty forehead scabs. The swollen legs. The wheelchairs. I searched deep inside, found the calm to gather and to be quiet. The Pastor played her favorite song. Talked of her love of dogs and cats and babies. Her sparkle. The way she was everyone’s favorite.

We miss work, deadlines, appointments. We miss each other. My kidneys hurt from the misoprostol last week. Did you know that there is so much blood? Drip dripping from my limbs. Do you know that you will live through anything?

I know that June is still an island. I can see it, shimmering in the sun of solstice ahead. I can see it in our plans, in the way things always open up. The way we all take care of each other. The way there is joy and tears over bagpipes in Boston, Pride parades, NBA, and Japanese fans eating Texas steaks for the first time. The world is so big and small.

I drive to Walmart in the early morning for supplies to clean out the nursing home room. The rain here smells like the ocean. The gas station girl interrupts her rap song to tell me “You have a blessed day now, okay?”

Everything is an ocean and an island. Especially in June.

“Okay. I am going to tell you what I do not see. I do not see a heartbeat anymore.”

If I could tell you what happened in a better way I would say that it was a blue moon.  I made a joke on a stage last week about how, by and large, the modern poet ought not speak. Something here about truth and illumination and brave things.

My great word comrade once said to me, in a way that made it impossible to not lean into a friendship, that he envied the hard things that had happened to me. Death really is great writing material, we joke.

It is humor that makes one love the heart of the human more than any other evidence I’ve found.

Last week I believed in the roadmap. The cards being counted, and of knowing how the odds tilt in favor of a better outcome. This week I remember that it is still forever a game of chance. I once wrote that the risk is always worth the reward. What does it mean if the risk is worth the pain? Maybe the same.

Does it make a difference how one faces things? Is this why I love a good war story, and what does that say about my make up?

One cool customer. I repeated this to my eyes, willing them to stare back at the nurse, to stay dry, and to absorb her finding as a vessel would. In and out. Not a ripple.

What I want to say is all too obvious. That in this moment, I am defeated. That I do not know how to trudge.

Is it too little to say that it’s not fair?

I am holding tight to the things we count; Our luck. Our family. Our friends. The finches that find the feeder. The bird bath he made with tiny rocks collected from our pasts. The meals. The movies.

Yesterday I walked a long while. Then I laughed at how funny a person might look in jogging clothes, crying alone gently inside of a bright sunny day.

A man passed me twice around the park loop. Go Red Sox, he smiled.

My hat. My god.

Careful kid, they’ll break your heart.

But it makes a good story doesn’t it?

I read about the vein that travels across the belly on its way to the heart, and how sleeping on one’s left side can relieve the pressure. I worry about things that if I said them out loud it would show my true natures. The ones on the surface, but show all the weather underneath. Who would stay and love me if they knew how deep vanity can run? I know that the tides want to swell, and I know that time delays for no one. I read about calcium and vitamin D and how enamel weakens. How a body will change in astonishing ways. How I will always be thirsty.

I think about the way the holders of these secrets are miracles, walking with soft smiles, as if to say, you’ll see it someday, and you’ll be okay. Look at us. Everything will be okay.

What does it look like to see in calm color?

What I want to say is that I understand what is happening, and I am ready; even if I can’t see anything ahead except in the abstract. Sometimes the only comfort is the same as the only scare; everything changes.

We both use words like if, maybe, and never when. We are aware of each possible outcome, and the ones in between. Is this what it means to take your life in your hands? All that chance, and still stepping off. Last night we biked to a concert in the railyard and shared a burger after I potted flowers and read in the sun while he walked 18 holes. I keep laughing that I am in my wholesome era. We make jokes because it makes sense to keep it light. I send my family a photo that we are given, and I am wondering what this time will look like in the winter. Everything feels like a precipice. Everything changes.

My mom tells me this morning that she tried to put in her eye drops without help, but her hands aren’t yet strong enough to squeeze. So she cried a little out of frustration, and then she laughed because she had wet her eyes enough.

I send her this song on my drive and I know she’ll understand what I mean when I send sad songs on Mother’s Day. Because of the way that holds everything. Because of the way we all are.

We laugh and we cry.

When we said goodbye to my dog last Friday in our house in Santa Fe, my mom was in ICU in Minneapolis. I focused on what we could control; his comfort, his whipped cream treats, his sun nap. I kissed every part of his tired face, and thanked him for being such a good boy. When his heart stopped, I cried, curling into myself so heavily that all I could feel was ache. Like stubbing a toe, or hitting a shin; all encompassing. Once, when we were new, I tripped on an icy log on a hike near Multnomah Falls. The wind was pushed out of my lungs and I was scared, alone. He was there, sprinting back, sniffing my face all over. Staying near my side in his silent way. Fifteen years. It is hard to understand this shift, even to myself. Especially to myself.

I read this week that the planets have rotated to make room for all that was needed to become something new. I’m trying to believe in that level of irony.

My boss told me of the three times in her life where she had to reroute a trip to care for someone. Once, in Amsterdam, boarding a cruise ship headed to Russia, her mother’s health brought her back to New York. She never got to go back and take that trip through the Baltic Sea. She stayed and took care of her mom, then had babies and began a career. There is no lesson in this, only life.

Work has been hard. I can say with all honesty that it feels like a lot to juggle lately.

I went to a book launch this week where the author spoke of quitting finance in Manhattan, moving back home, and trying to convince his mother, with help from his siblings, that she needed a liver transplant. His large Muslim-Indian-American family were all changed, coming together as adults, seeing their parents as vulnerable beings, learning the old ways, and choosing care over their own comfort for a period. There is something obvious here about finding abundance in loss. Abundance in scarcity.

I found myself saying a prayer, right in the middle of the talk. A mantra that repeated, “Please give me the strength to hold all of this. Please let me be good at love.”

What I meant to say was ‘good at loving’, but I stopped, because the way I asked it was more honest.

It still hits me, even at this age, that I am a grown up. Showing up for hard things, making choices, giving care when I am able to, and even when I am not. I have learned more in this than any human experience. It is simple and shocking. Still.

Early in these days of not refilling the dog bowl, or hearing the shake of his ears in the morning, we found out something that we are breathing soft whispers into; tending to grief and hope in the same breath, and I am still quietly asking for the strength to hold it all. We keep cracking jokes of the metaphor here that is so obvious. Openings and closings. Windows and doors.

My mom pre-filled out Mother’s Day cards to send to everyone she loves before she went into surgery. It is important for her to do so. My sister laughed when she saw all of the stamped letters tasked for her to mail in the backseat. We laugh a lot.

It is important to hold everything. Even when you cannot. Especially when you cannot. The wind blows. Windows and doors.

A Ritual to Read to Each Other

/And so I appeal to a voice, to something shadowy,

a remote important region in all who talk:

though we could fool each other, we should consider—

lest the parade of our mutual life get lost in the dark.

For it is important that awake people be awake,

or a breaking line may discourage them back to sleep;

the signals we give — yes or no, or maybe —

should be clear: the darkness around us is deep./

-William Stafford

What it really is is that I’m thinking about time. It was 2016, I was living and writing and trying to survive in San Diego.

What I really wanted to write about is Justin Bieber though. Which is also strange. My youngest brother looked like him. Giggling middle school girls would tell him this constantly. It became a source of pride and identity, to be admired adjacent to someone with so much confidence and charisma. Someone who seemingly had it all together. What he had was adoration too young, and vampires grabbing at him; every trustworthy person he was taught to believe, and endure. I am not even really talking about this, because I do not know, not really. What I do know is that four days before my brother died, my sister told him that Bieber had released a new music video of the song Holy. We hadn’t been holding much hope for movement. The ICU staff told us that his brain activity was unknown. That we shouldn’t expect any miracles at that point in hospice. But when my sister played that song on her phone, his head turned, and those brown eyes found the video, watching very carefully, a tear rolling down his cheek.

Our dog is going away soon. We have decided on a date, and it is a soft din of agony. What does it look like? It looks like his eyes are sweeter, his fur is softer, and he must know something big, because he looks at me like I shouldn’t worry so much. It is hard to trust in one’s decisions, no matter how the shoulds are stacked.

Last night my grandmother’s nursing team called to say that she is being moved to “hospice-level” care. My mom softly joked that it just means she will be getting more attention from the staff, which she will absolutely love. The dementia leaves her childlike, and so very herself.

What I’m trying to understand is simple: There is the swirling confusion of life, no matter how long or how unfairly short; then the end can be so calm. So childlike. The trust in oneself is complete, and all of an identity built on shoulds has the space to leave. This is what I am choosing to believe in. This, and miracles.

This morning my writing circle talked about aging, memories, and how we are all grabbing at the same idea of loving a smaller version of ourselves. I listened to a therapist talk about inner child work, and how brave that boy Bieber was to choose himself and not worry so much about should.

There is a point I am trying to get at, or maybe there is not.

How special. How simple. How miraculous.

Today I surprised my grandmother by driving 5 hours to her nursing home. I walked into the room; a sea of wheelchairs and the sound of her favorite song filling the air;

Don Mclean’s Vincent, and her big smiling eyes, her long chimp-like arms reaching for me. “My my…um… this is my daughter! No…my grandaughter!! My kid! Oh oh oh! You sneak!”

and I sat and listened to that man sing all of their requests, one by one. And I looked around and teared up a little when another woman with curled hair, blurry eyes and a calm soul, requested “The Dance” by Garth Brooks, and sang along;

/Our lives are better left to chance

I could’ve missed the pain

But I’d had to miss the dance/

____

We haven’t been sleeping much. Telling ourselves it will all be easier someday soon. We just know it. And how grateful we are for all of this love together. How much it means; messy and real.

A midnight emergency veterinarian gave us a chart that she described as a ‘Cosmopolitan quiz,” like the ones from when we were teenagers. This one adds up the total score, and you read the outcome at the bottom, weekly. It is called the Lap of Love: Your Pet’s-Quality-of-Life Scale.

-Is your pet still joyful at your presence?

-Does your pet still bark at the mailman? (Only if they’re bringing bills)

-Does your pet seem confused?

-…especially at night?

I talk to my grandma’s care team about her MRI in the morning. I say I will ride with her, and we all laugh a little when they mention her “dramatic” tendencies and fear, but they reassure me that they will help her feel at ease, meaning medicine, meaning ‘quality-of-life” care. I tell her it’s just taking a photo of her pain. And that I will stay, and we will have ice cream after. She laughs at me because we both know I am treating her like a child. And then she can’t find the word for what she wants to say, and she throws up her soft hands and laughs and sighs. I exclaim how pretty her manicure is, and we talk about the rings on my fingers. We always talk about the rings on my fingers. I tell her we are trying to create a baby and I tell her about the dog and the hard nights and all of the joy.

She says, we are going to have to find the words together. I pause and smile at her; how profound, and how confused she must be, and how understanding that can make a person understand everything else.

Starry starry night.

“…and believe in adhesion, in never showing up
empty-handed, even if the pleasure I know best
is fused with the abject. There is always
the other side of the heart, its coaxing:
You are here. You can begin again. You can rise.”

-Rick Barot, from Paradise

I wanted to write of something other than the wild sleepless nights that cooked together all of these past months. Or of the bitterness I have become so very afraid of inside of women, and of the way one attracts what they pour into and over. What do we do?

When I am not writing, I am throwing clothes around the rooms, deciding different versions of myself. I am cooking too many butter beans, forgetting that I am the only one who likes them in this house. I’m wandering the market aisles, listening to grocery store yacht rock, feeling anonymous and swimmy, taking time to read labels and notice how many neon-canned NA drink options there are now. I still buy a bottle of red wine because it is beautiful outside and I am glad for a night off. I cook and drink and open windows as the sky turns from hot blue to cantaloupe. We cleaned out our closets and everything feels a little less full. Maybe there is finally more room to make more stories together. My brother once told me that his favorite movie was Mr Nobody, with Jared Leto. Except he kept calling it “Nemo Nobody”, and we would laugh and now I can’t ever not say both when I think of it. That’s the thing about memories. Which closet do they fit in, and which season?

I watched the new NPR’s Tiny Desk of a band I heard first in Houston, that humid and seismic summer years ago. I would drive the sprawling highways that loop all around the city proper, listening to music with the windows down and my back pooling with sweat. I would drink so much cold brew, and palomas with BBQ and patio music at night in that sticky heat that I became an entirely new self. Is that how it happens? So languidly and then all at once. What is that quote from Kingsolver’s Flight Behavior?…“You never knew which split second might be the zigzag bolt dividing all that went before from the everything that comes next.”

I am remembering how to be a person in the springtime. I don’t mean a springtime person, that is different. I mean that I am becoming human again. When I am not writing, I am making lists, and adding things onto the calendar. I have been afraid of the way blind rage can overpower at 7pm, and how I must reckon with the steps and the habits that brought me there. Here is the place where there is no one to change a thing except the sheer will to be joyful inside, beyond fact or fear. Here is responsibility for the space I take up in my life, and for the hundred ways one moves through their days. My husband strings a sentence together and laughs at himself. “We are growing through it.” It is another sentence that looks bright strung up above the window. He prunes the rose bush that somehow lasted another season. There is such an obvious lesson in that. I am remembering the way Tweedy still sings right through the ribs, and how Irish music still makes me cry too much and too weird, and how I still love waking up together, in the early morning when there is no rush, to tell each other our dreams. And of how we both feel so happy watching comfort movies, and laugh at the same small things inside of them. We keep coming back.

“I was just thinking and talking to my therapist about this time in March when we all were in Naples - and with Nico - and the white flowers we had for his funeral. And carrying so many things at once.” - a text from my mother

I read a novel about grief, or maybe about a pickle jar with a ghost, in the shape of a fish, which is the strangest and best explanation for how it can feel. How there are some things that swirl into the present real time; how they do not promise to stay, and how that is right, and comforting. We keep coming back.

It seemed especially important
not to spill the coffee as I usually
do, as I turned up the stairs,
inside the whorl of the house as if
I were walking up inside the lilies.
I do not know how to hold all

the beauty and sorrow of my life.

-Cynthia Zarin

A friend tells us that last night he and his wife went to Claire’s in the old mall, pierced their ears, then went out for fro-yo. He says they are going to the Bright Eyes anniversary party in LA to see old Omaha friends.

That is all it is isn’t it? Remembering the point. Coming back.

He told me a story about Harrison Ford and how he got his ear pierced at 40 after a boozy lunch with Jimmy Buffett. How infectiously joyful he was. Which reminds me of being eighteen in those parrot earrings from Block Island, dancing with the geriatric crowd in Minneapolis to Margaritaville. Passing a joint through the tropical shirts all around us.

Salt salt salt.

My writing circle shares an N. Scott Momaday poem. Which reminds me that my friend brought her new baby into the bookstore last week. That we both cried over the thrill and pain of being alive. We laugh at how she doesn’t think this tiny baby looks like her, yet there is so much Momaday in there. We hold her up, that little velvet butt. The grey slanted eyes. The wide knowledge in the brow. That big observing bear soul. When he passed away last year, this adobe town cracked with a heart. I see her filling up her hair and her cowboy boots with the dust of that legacy. Her poems. Her children. Her plans. They way her hoop earrings shake and carry the strength in balanced equity.

I think to the way everything spirals back to the center. I see my father’s eyebrows on my face now. The way New England will always be summer. The way the 90’s are cool again, how I felt so inadequate in my mishmashed little life. The swirl of finding the point. Yet here it was. Waiting all the while to fill up my shoes with dad’s Irish toes, my grandma’s eyes in mine, her infectious joy, and my mother’s soft, capable hands, driving the car, writing the poems.

Dust and legacy, coming back.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~

From A Benign Self-Portrait:

/I think of my old red flannel shirt,

The one I threw away in July.

I would like to pat the warm belly of a

Beagle or the hand of a handsome woman.

I look ahead to cheese and wine,

And a bit of Bach, perhaps,

Or Schumann on the bow of Yo-Yo Ma.

I see the mountains as I saw them

When my heart was young.

But were they not a deeper blue

…….I turn inward on a wall of books.

They are old friends, even those that

Have dislodged my dreams. One by one

They have shaped the thing I am….

In the blue evening, in another room,

There is the faint laughter of ghosts,

And in a tarnished silver frame, the

likeness of a boy who bears my name.

-N. Scott Momaday, Navarro Scott Mammedaty

When I was very young but thought I was wise, we pretended to be secretly married.

Are we built from this want? The way we learn how to love. And then? The baby tooth in your mouth that never fell out.

There is a place inside where things loop. Called to that scene in Hamnet where she pulls upon her power. Look at me, she whispers. Look at me, she shouts. I want to understand what we do with the old things. And is it good to live in that place of dirt and letters? Does it build a healthy soil for a new life? Is it a good life to make from?

The squawking seagulls that circled that day long ago. How long do birds live? There is the ferry boat dock where we closed the truck doors to the wind; and suddenly there were silent movies all around. You proposed over a peanut butter and banana sandwich toasted on the dash. You joked that if it didn’t work out we could just get divorced.

And today, as I eat this peanut buttered-english muffin, toasted by my husband and handed to me as a gesture of sweet peace, I think he understands. Of course he understands. But there are things we will never speak of. Things we both do not share, except in neutrals. How do I ask for the depths that I need from him? In this life, I am thinking of the squawking seagulls and the silent movies that loop. Look at me, I am shouting. The baby tooth in my mind that never falls out.

/If you have ghosts then you have everything/

/She lives in a time of her own/

-13th Floor Elevators

Writing group has been a sort of anchor in this driftless February. I can’t afford it but then again I can. Of course I can.

I baked three cakes and burned the oven on the third, rushing, overfilling it. There is something here about trying to overfill myself. We have been dark under our eyes for lack of sleep and the hard nights. I bought a map of the Gila wilderness when he booked the campsite from years ago and we make a sketch for a far off time called May. It serves as a talisman and point on the homemade calendar hanging on the wall. The horizon of spring and sleep and adventures. Maybe new things I cannot say or wish for yet. The wind picked up this week and I of course thought of the gallop. The fire.

This is just a sort of moon list,

a moment or a portal: Early last morning in my small kitchen here, refilling the cup of coffee, I was in my grandma’s old kitchen. The old brick house that my Grandpa Marty bought for 37 thousand when one could still do things like buy a brick house for 37 thousand; That house with the small warm lamps everywhere, and the red appliances, and snow capped Pike’s Peak from the window. The safeness for respite in all of it. Waking up too early, everything light blue dark, the ticking bird clock; That feeling of waking up at dawn before an airport flight as a child, or at twenty five, or always. Not getting real sleep there because of the loud TV all night; Hogans Heros, or the Andy Griffith show, and her snoring, or muttering to Martin, or shuffling down to the hallway bathroom (the one with the pink carpet.)

And the pies and donuts on the counter, always. The butter knife out, her halving them all (“I only want half a piece.”) The white paper napkins.

He calls them blips.

What am I trying to say in all of this?

When I go I will remember this, and I hope that I will be seen, and see;

love and worry everywhere.

Mary Oliver’s words on Molly Malone Cook:

/ “[she] had will and wit and probably too much empathy for others; she was quick in speech and she did not suffer fools. When you knew her she was unconditionally kind. But also, as our friend the Bishop Tom Shaw said at her memorial service, you had to be brave to get to know her.

[…]

She was style, and she was an old loneliness that nothing could quite wipe away; she was vastly knowledgeable about people, about books, about the mind’s emotions and the heart’s. She lived sometimes in a black box of memories and unanswerable questions, and then would come out and frolic — be feisty, and bold./

and this, from last writing group. Thank you

Artist’s Statement:

For whom the world turns,

Listen… I’m looking for help. I’m late, and learning how the grant writing world operates, and I’d like to be a part of academic privilege before I lose my courage. I work 40+ hours a week for an independent bookstore. I love it mostly every one of those minutes. Sometimes a customer throws off the vibe, or an author doesn’t understand the symbiosis of book magic, or I’m a little hungover, or my home life is feeling in shambles (i.e., there are dishes and laundry to do and I’m overly dramatic.) I’ve published three books of creative non-fiction, and I like to figure out how things feel by writing through them. I like sad cowboy songs. I volunteer a lot, mostly connecting with the strange fringe societies (inmate writing groups, children, and barflies with hearts of gold.)

My husband is my best friend. We got married last year with the help of our wildly cool and talented community near and far. I mean, we really put them to work. A DIY wedding of over 300 people. Gorgeous. Brave. Thankful.

Anyway, what I really need is to get out into nature again. I need time and money to turn off for a while and still contribute to the life I care deeply about. Is this a real thing? It’s asking everything.

mostly I survived off people being nice to me

-Jess Williamson

What I want to do is learn new skills on how to speak up, set boundaries, and be more vulnerable. I want to help others learn how to write in brave ways. I want to shake up my year a little and make core memories that shape how I dream that the next half of my life could be. Mostly, how to be less of an asshole, more of a benefit to this place and the people that I love. I also need to remember my passions and get those going more often, so that I don’t shop online for material things that make me feel like I’m never enough.

I want to gather a bunch of like-minded women (my background is outdoor education, and men usually outnumber me in most settings. I’m tired of being in the field with energy that I’m too meek to speak up around for some reason (insert goals here), so I end up missing pertinent information and lessons. This happened often, notably in my Rafting Swiftwater Rescue course, where I could not wrap my head around pulley systems, and was too shy to get in front of the group to get my hands on the carabiners and knots.)

I miss having the guts to daydream; to learn new things and risk feeling dumb. I miss my tent.

Project Proposal: To get dirty, hike a canyon, climb a 5’10 again, read poetry out loud, smoke, drink wine, and pull tarot cards around a juniper fire; I want to find a new weird dive bar. Talk about aliens; past lives. Then make coffee and wash my head in a river; Write some prose about it.

This request is for the amount that it takes to get out there and have some refreshing experiences. Not for a wealthy weekend warrior with a 2026 loaded Tacoma, but for a girl with weathered gear, a small SUV, some dusty know-how, and a passport she needs to renew soon.

Thank you for your consideration and for the opportunity,

Grovelly yours,

Jill Prendergast

One For The Catholic Girls

I read Camus advising “Lightly, lightly my child.” Deep deep down and deep deep up.

To be affected by all things; Great and weighty; Light and lusty.

“Honey we’re always gonna be the villain in someone’s story”

Today I drove north over the mountain pass and I didn’t want it to end. White and yellow lines with a flat plain and a blue sky. Pulling from that primal place between my collarbones.

Hit the Wendy’s drive-through for a chicken sandwich and an over-sweetened cold brew on my way out of town. Guy at the window with a toothless grin squinting in the sunshine, “You having a good day ma’am?” I say, ‘Hoping to be, are you?’

He winks, “Every day I wake up.”

Yesterday, a customer brought her new baby to the bookstore. I hadn’t seen her in so long and there they were. He had a homespun sweater and ears that stuck out and a face that had been here before, taking it all as deja vu. I wanted to scoop them both up so I made her a latte to keep my hands busy.

I asked her how her husband’s doing at the gallery; I asked “Is he just loving it all? And “god this little guy looks exactly like both of you!”

Do we always know when a moment will happen just before it does? Palpable.

“Oh..um. You didn’t know… I never know how to say it. Oh no…. Oh I’m so sorry, Jill.”

(She was so sorry.)

Oh god.

“He passed away…. Um… he passed away a month before the baby was born. We found out about the cancer… and then he was gone.” Eye meeting eye. It’s so bright in here, and our faces both flush with the weight of being so publicly human and it hurts so bad I can’t remember what to do except I’m so, so very sorry.

So I watch her pick up that gurgling happy baby who doesn’t know anything except that he’s been here for six months and this is his mom. “Hey, I love this pacifier and her and this sweater and this day.’

We hug and she leaves and I cry in the back and then I wipe my face.

Been thinking about the Midwest a lot. About growing up in Minneapolis; The cold and the warmth. About Omaha and Jason Molina and Simon Joyner.

How sadness can feel so comfortable.

/‘Cause everything happens so fast

And you’re waiting with half dry eyes

For something to fall or something to rise/

I talk to our bartender friend. The one who pours beers and tells me I am a good light. He tells me this often.. How we are both Scorpios and that means we are okay and I somehow believe it.

It is my grandma’s birthday. I rush into her new room and she takes my face in her impossibly soft hands. Her eyes are mine, and she knows me. She is so happy to see me that I cannot believe I’ve ever hated myself, even for a moment.

and then she is kissing the framed photo I’ve brought for her of our wedding dance. She is loving how he wore Grandpa Marty’s bolo tie, and she is understanding that it was okay that the baby didn’t make it this time. She says “Maybe there will be a real baby soon, and you’ll see that one again someday and I’ll see mine.” I tell her she is so beautiful and I start to cry so we laugh and hug again and we talk about how I’ll bring her a hamburger from Burger King tomorrow and she squeals.

My mom’s eyes are bright again and we talk over dinner and we look at old pictures. Most times I don’t know where I end or she begins. We blur.

Everything blurs lightly. Impossibly soft.

I said “I don’t even have the gumption to get on the mat.”

That what I wanted to do was make slow chili all morning and watch a show in clean soft clothes all afternoon. The snow started falling around 2 as response. You came home from your “space” and started shoveling a path. Kicked the powder from your boots and said softly, “Well, it smells pretty good in here.”

The bowls. The sofa. The warmth. We touched hands.

Right before bed, I wrapped up in a giant scarf and boots. The air stark soft as more snow kept falling. The old dog ran down the empty street of our neighborhood, everything new. His tiny tracks full of vigor, and me watching and shoveling. Stark, smiling.

Today we woke up sad and soft after I said dumb, harsh words. We gulped coffee and some bites, then headed to work together because I had asked for his help in a better moment. One Headlight by the Wallflowers came on the speakers as we opened up the shop, and I silently wished my dad a happy birthday. I could hear him stubbornly insisting it was “Jason” Dylan, not Jacob (pre-google proof.) Handing us dollars for the Seagrape jukebox to play it again.

I wanted to give this a stamp before we crest and spill over.

It is time to be kind. Less mean, less insecure. More desert. More rocks.

This year was Sully’s backyard fireflies, Rowland Beach, a million reminders. It was Kathleen and Lindsey, and Jake. It was cousins and “hey kiddo”s making my eyes blur wet.

The flush of hormones before we even knew something was there. The glow of something new. The moment of an ultrasound, my mom and I not able to make eye contact just yet. Searching desperately for the flicker. Another nurse. Another room.

Losing a tooth. A rainstorm. A fight.

Trudging through something and learning what that means, again and again. Replacing a car battery. Replacing dog beds with thicker memory foam. New shower curtains, appliances, pans. Reading Didion’s A Year of Magical Thinking, again. Reading Rothfuss’s Name of the Wind, again. Not riding my bike a lot. Losing 7 pounds anyway from lack of zest. Slowly finding it again.

Reconnecting with old soul friends. Thrifting Danskos. Thrifting Luccheses. Mending my grandpa Marty’s old Wool Air Force trench. Singing happy birthday to my Grammy Gwen.

Carrying a mountain of remorse on my shoulders on that morning train.

A bleary-eyed awakening. Therapy. New medication journeys.

Losing friendships and discovering the very good in that. Deepening friendships with better intentions at the core. Showing up. Staying up. Dancing.

A summer of compound community. Old insecurities rising and falling and rising. The well of emotional maturity to dip from. The disappointment in self. The pride in self.

Meeting my writing group boons and being one to others at times. Hungrily opening email posts from the ones I admire on here. Building a practice again.

Walking home serenely on that Lion’s full moon. Losing my grandpa suddenly.

Cooking my mom quinoa. Crying over her vulnerability. Crying over her strength.

Laughing over pain. Dreaming of Nico as a toddler, again and again.

Satin pillowcases. Gifting perfume. Beeswax candles in the mailbox from a dear heart on solstice. Prayer beads. Flowers everywhere.

Reading Madeline Miller’s, Circe again, sweating in June.

First trimester pilates at sunrise in the spare room. Feeling firm and hopeful.

Meeting Nick Offerman and his voice after the fires brought him and his wife to Santa Fe for a hard exhale. Watching Joy Harjo read Washing My Mother’s Body, a day after losing a tooth and a heartbeat.

My father-in-law lighting a candle in St Francis Cathedral. Calling my brother Jesse at his seminary school while driving in a Minnesota rainstorm. Having to tell him Mom's hospital updates and Grandpa's news in the same span. Feeling that sense of safety he always gives. Wondering when we became adults.

Driving up the mountain with the sunroof open. Remembering the switchbacks.

Mending a pair of jeans by candlelight. Cooking together. Cooking alone. Hiding in the warm dish sink. Hiding in the warm bath.

Visiting the kittens at Petsmart. Visiting my grandma in the nursing home. A sound machine because after a bad bout with Covid, my husband snores.

A couch from his parents. A new job. Watching him build a music room again.

Casa Bonita in Colorado. Laughing. A hundred shows. Watching Glen Hansard ride a bike near the plaza in a blue blazer. Building fires. Reading Madwoman by Chelsea Biekler. Reading Cat Bohannon’s Eve outloud and annoying everyone. Reading All Fours by Miranda July, trying to understand my own annoyance at it. Reading Momaday‘s poetry. Hearing my friend read about her grandpere from the stage memorial. A picnic in Patrick Smith Park and toasting to every layer. Reading Wide Sargasso Sea. Reading Madeline Thein’s Book of Records. Bumming cigarettes in the sun. Java shots for every celebration.

Smashing blue bottles in the desert. Saying, “All I do is love you” to my friend and meaning it.

Growing a rose bush. Watching him create a garden. Habanero and fresh salsa parties. Watching him feed the crew.

Fuego baseball. Driving a forklift.

Lobster rolls in Boston. Fenway Park hot dogs. Crying over thousands of Red Sox fans singing “Sweet Caroline”. Reading Afterlife Project by Tim Weed on the Amtrak next to the ocean.

The Galisteo Rodeo mutton busters. A doctor’s office. Meatballs and spaghetti to comfort everything. Watching the Cheers reruns and Norm in the sticky summer nights. Reading Jenny Offils, Weather. Feeding cheese to the dogs at 6 am. Watching the Young Pope and texting my brother all of my priestly queries.

Sarah’s Story Lab in the bookstore. Being told my future and past by that oracle I stumbled upon at an art gallery. The crows in the bathroom. Watching the entire Lost series. Watching friends get married and blowing bubbles. Meeting my friend’s baby on the beach where we grew up.

The Paul McCartney concert, crying over him missing his friend John. Thousands singing the same song together and it means a thousand different things.

Watching my nephew play football. Watching my sister be in love.

Art openings. Indian Market Week and the Farmer’s market hatch chiles roasting. Celebrating our tender one-year anniversary with wedding cake from the freezer and a spa day. New babies. New bathrobes. Losing that gifted coat at the airport. Finding another one on eBay in a midnight moment of desperation, and forgiveness. Watching Liverpool games in the mornings, finally understanding, “You’ll Never Walk Alone".

Thrifting on Fridays together.

Figuring it out, together. In cahoots.

Happy New Year.

It is as it must be. The tire goes flat, the tooth falls out, there will be a hundred meals without mustard. The poem gets written. I have wrestled with the angel and I am stained with light, and I have no shame. Neither do I have guilt.

*

If I am a year older, I am too old to try for a baby. If I am to believe this, then how do I assemble my next life? How do we decorate the tree next year, knowing that everything will always be the same? Or if I am to believe that, could I stir up our life like broth, mixing in something more? A small black kitten or a backpack. A good deep afternoon. A true-blue day of fixing the car. Scrubbing the tub. Sleeping in that tent.

If I am to believe that I have let them all down, where to assemble a purpose?

If I am listening to Florence in the car then I am alone, and I have listened to it already four times, and I might be losing it.

The sunroof is open, and the world is too warm on this winter solstice. Is it alright to like the heat? Is everything alright?

Then you are loving me in ways like coming up behind and hugging me deeply

No, but if you are yourself and not my expectation, then you are cooking dinners and you are relaxed. I am safe, and you are devoted.

If you understand me then you are seeing that maybe we are not speaking the same signals,

How can we create a thing with a different language? If I am me, then I am spirals, and if you are loving me then you are watching/waiting. But my hair is drying from wet to waves, and I could almost feel better.

If I am feeling better, then maybe we could try for another baby.

*Upstream, essays by Mary Oliver

I ask myself, what do I do to fancy the words? To make them adjustable like neutrals. A background lo-fi. There is a question lately of palatial favor and I feel alone in my measurements

/Fate is chaos. We are not gods/ /I laughed at you and thought of scale./

There is something here I am trying to say about starting with a conviction and finishing with it changed.

He played in the land of Zelda while I watched an obsessive gaze in Fifty Shades, laughing at myself and us both. We held hands anyway and shared green olives across the sofa.

I dreamt of being kissed by an old lover in a house I’ve never seen. Why is running so hard when sleeping? It is floating fast with no rudder to steer. I dream I am navigating Central Park bundled in a good periwinkle puffer coat to the nose. I am me, but not.

Ode with Interruptions

BY RICK BAROT

Someone is in the kitchen washing the dishes.

Someone is in the living room watching the news.

Someone in a bedroom is holding a used stamp

with tweezers and adding it to his collection.

Someone is scolding a dog, barking now for

decades, a different dog for each of the decades.

Someone is reading the paper and listening to

a baseball game on the radio at the same time — 

At the base of the altar, you drop some coins

into a wooden box and the lights reveal the vast,

worn painting in front of you. The holy subject

is illuminated for a few minutes before it is dim

again. There are churches all over Italy where

you can do this. The smell of incense, stone — 

Someone is taking the ashes out of the small

cave of the fireplace, though this might have been

a hundred years ago, when the house was new

and we didn’t live in it. Someone is writing

a letter on thin blue paper. Someone is putting

down the needle onto a spinning record, just so.

On the couch, someone is sleeping. Upstairs,

someone is looking into the bathroom mirror — 

While we were waiting for her surgery to finish,

I walked around the hospital and came across

a waiting room that had an enormous aquarium.

/Someone is walking down the creaking staircase

in the dark, a hand sliding on the rail. Someone

is on the telephone, which means nobody else

can use it for another hour. Someone in his room

is doing homework, me or someone almost like

me, twenty, fifty years ago. Someone is reading

in her room. Someone is talking to the gray wall.

Someone is talking to the gray wall. In summer,

on a hot afternoon, someone peels at a corner

of wallpaper and sees more wallpaper beneath — 

I used to think that to write poems, to make art,

meant trying to transcend the prosaic elements

of the self, to arrive at some essential plane, where

poems were supposed to succeed. I was wrong.