Foolish All Over Again

So Medusa is a therapist - that makes sense. 

Living in ways that mean a certain messiness has to abound.

A promise, a pansy, a portion.

Remember shoulders?

Trying to explain that a painting is a form of love while a photograph is a form of fear - the distinction having to do with one's relationship to time - and failing. 

Nel Nodding's ideas about care, say.

Her vast body somehow containing the river beside which we briefly collapsed two marriages into one. 

In winter the moon is never where one expects yet the reflected light - re-reflected light - restores to mind the desires of childhood.

Want is destructive, every queen knows this.

Kissing her hips, forgetting everything but where I am going with her, with her consent.

He made us instant coffee with tap water and cubes of sugar and we drank it in light rain by the fence, looking at his oxen, and talking about people we both knew who were mostly long dead.

Twice I've given head in the fire tower in Goshen, both times in the morning, and both times after I prayed. 

Big pots of stew over camp fires, everybody happy in ways we had forgotten remained possible. 

Winter cranes.

Learning you cannot heal anybody, not even yourself, but only give consent to be healed, is what heals.

Seven cups of coffee later the afternoon dissembles and you realize you've been foolish all over again.

What was clever yesterday is merely paying rent today.

A wicker basket in which half a dozen scented oils are gathered. 

Heavy curtains drawn against the cold.

There is only one relationship and it is this one, this moment, in this sentence, this us we create via language.