just a strand

black sky with stars bouncing by above running blind my neck hyper-extended Krauser's full of teenage boys on rear bumpers girls circled into testosterone barriers
grass spongy road unforgiving sand a challenge beneath my sneakers
and the summer air pushing against my face clinging humidity trying to stop me in my tracks, turn me back suck me into night

Was it blackmail?

There are days I read my latest blog creation with pride;
then there are days I wonder which vengeful Blogspot employee was on a bender the day my application was accepted.

from my head before Sunday bed

Driving along alone I whoop the way you do when your favorite team wins the game in the final seven seconds.

Along my track of singledom I knew what then seemed impossible would happen to me some day. I knew one day I would meet someone and a first date would ... become. Standing in line admiring the boy sharing every day with the girl, her arm casually about his waist, or hands linked by fingers, bewildered once more at the familiarity I no longer shared with a lover, I mystically believed my life would grow to acheive that honor once more.

How many times in our lives do we have the strength that carries us intact from everything through nothing into a new everything? There is seemingly always something else up the road somewhere.

I certainly haven't known you adequately long enough to tell you I love you; I haven't known you long enough to tell you how often it has nearly slipped out at the ends of good night phone calls, when you curl into my chest at 7AM and I am so joyful I giggle out loud.

We are so new.



As a serious follow up in a casual tone to our friendly discussions about my continuing education hopes you postulated the option of my going to school for massage therapy. I've often thought of it and almost, almost applied two years ago but didn't put enough pressure on my reference letter writers and missed the deadline.

Here I am absorbing your confidence in me and thinking, Well who knows how massage therapy school will occur but something will work out. This is good. When I get so blindly optimistic it often means I'm going after something disregarding the potential strength of obstacles in the dark.

Spring fever?

What a marvelous afternoon! The breeze was a coolness overpowered by the warmth of the sun (or the sun's less-blocked rays!) On our walk from dinner this same evening, I noticed beds of healthy pansies in bloom. On the Eastern seaboard of North America in January.
My favorite thing about this photo is the happiness in my face.

My favorites from the aquarium were the rays (that's a constant) and the Thresher shark.

once upon

My father asked me once this summer if it seemed to me Maine had never really happened.
It will never feel nonexistent but a dream I once had and what have I left? License plates, wedding bands, a pair of your swim trunks, and memories of watching your profile intent on a movie, hands in my hair, snowflakes sticking intact to my winter coat.

the taste of things

You must understand I am not always of this world
I am nakedness drowned in fresh wind, sand between my teeth, briny water pouring over my tongue
I am grasses whispering, the soar of an eagle on an updraft, seabirds crossing the ocean, droplets of waves landing on their bodies, wingtips brushing the crests.
I am sunlight falling in splashes through summer leaves puddling gold on pine needle underbrush.
I am dirt on my skin and sweat in my eyes and wind rushing as hot breath down my throat in gasps.
I am the blood with iron tang pulsing.
I am the scream and the thrust.
I am primal.
I am you and you are me and we are the earth of the water and the air, of the skies and the land, of every creature manifested.

'Aunt' Karen and baby Kathryn 12/31/06

On holding my friends' daughter New Year's Eve

In the warm, dampening spot on my chest I feel her entire tiny body lifting and falling with every breath. My back begins to ache from leaning backwards to provide her a more horizontal sleeping surface but I am not giving up these moments for everything and she srunches her pink face, grunts some, and stretches taut as I gently lift her yet again back toward my neck. When she rests this the head not much bigger than my fist enclosing the other rests on a U of extended arms.
I point out her long eyelashes and her grandmother says, in her Russian Yiddish accent, "She has no eyebrows!" and chuckles. But she does, painted faintly in wisps. One of her ears is perfect, and the other is more than perfect; a divot in the pinna creating a valentine heart shape.
I love food more than almost anything and focused on the bowl of fresh jumbo shrimp the moment we entered the dining room- but for the next ninety minutes I will kindly refuse to come to the table, preferring my slip of luxury with a three day old girl papoosed in my sweater asleep on my chest.

Bliss

On Saturday night I went on a date.
On Sunday morning he went home.
On Monday night, as we lay cuddling, he told me how he kept smelling the shirt he wore on Saturday night because it smelled of me.
He kissed me goodbye in this morning's sunshine and called to see I had gotten home safely.