"In the night also my heart instructs me."
The problem with the pre-menopausal period — I’m sorry. Was that too much information? It was? Oh. Well. I *assure* you it’s necessary contextual detail for understanding Day 1 of my bicycle ride. Take a deep breath. It’ll be over soon. Ready? Here we go. The problem with the premenopausal period is its profound uncertainty.... Continue Reading →
It is dark, and the house is asleep. Outside rain splashes against the window as if some frenetic milkmaid grown a hundred feet tall is slinging buckets at it. Buckets of rainwater coming down and more rain on the horizon. Has the balance been upset? Does rain falling now still mean life later? Or have... Continue Reading →
It is impossible to explain, in any real sense, what it is to feel alone. It is either the case that, when you speak your feeling aloud, others nod in recognition, thus pulling you out of darkness and into a warm and lighted room where loneliness itself ceases and even the memory of it dispels... Continue Reading →
Comes now the hour of lament When freezing air numbs flesh and sears the bone When I in salted earth sink down, Unmindful how the poison scars my knees. I fell to them some hours ago here in this desert of trees ripped by the root. The hills, which were my comfort, could not withstand... Continue Reading →
Sunday, before sunrise. The clock on top of the little curio shelf in the corner is ticking, ticking, ticking — ticking the seconds till sunrise. Its ticking, which I do not notice sometimes, echoes now in the quiet house. It makes a clatter, I think, and a nuisance of itself. The double windows looking out... Continue Reading →
Come to the page. Come to the page on a windy night, as the cat on the porch slips out of sight, and the growling dog gives up the fight. Come to the page. Come to the page when the waves are high, when they froth and crash ‘neath a glistening sky, which holds both... Continue Reading →
The man on the tavern roof was shirtless in late September. Skinny and muscled with tattoos down his shoulders, he squatted over the rotten boards with a hammer in one hand and nails in the other. He smiled at me when I smiled at him. Though, I think, had I not looked and smiled first,... Continue Reading →
I was leaving on a journey. I had prepared well. I had a backpack of the hiker’s variety, with rods to keep it straight along my spine and straps and buckles over every individual compartment. Inside the compartments were a tiny stove and pots and pans and freeze-dried food packets and canteens full of water. ... Continue Reading →
Blackbirds, golden, in the bleached branches of a drowned tree, and from another, a speckle-breasted sparrow peering down at me. He cocks his head. The crane on the riverbank shrugs her white shoulders up before the awkward push, like that of a child learning to dive. Then she is up and out and over the... Continue Reading →
In the morning, the taste of buttered bread on her tongue, watching down the road for Time to come. Time is like a thief, they say, but this morning she does not see him so. This morning, he comes like a young man — or no, rather, as one as young as the dawn and... Continue Reading →