Better in Yellow

Long dialogues about Gilligan vs. Shaggy, coming down on the side of Shaggy consistently, largely because nobody has read the Tao Te Ching and so can't evaluate my analysis of Gilligan. We are situated now, we are calling this home.

Chrisoula and I drive to Bennington for the day, wandering around drinking tea and coffee, eating wraps we made at home, and something in me settles in a way I will not allow to be disturbed ever again. Blossoms on the Christmas cactus slipping into the sink, pretty in a way that I don’t want to touch.

Never disregard the power of parenthetical afterthought? The prayer deepens at four a.m., ice melting in the chicken waterers we keep near the door.

Suddenly this obsession with flamingos. My heart is made of leather left out too long in the sun?

Rewriting the sentence with Jeremiah in it over and over and at last giving up. Losing it in the grocery store, walking quickly out leaving my cart, unwilling to hurt anybody. 

Bird houses set too closely together. Wishing it was easier is only possible when you know it can be.

Dad's interest in rifles which I did not begin to make peace with until well into my forties. Family saying awkwardly, don't go, going anyway, and decades later struggling with the boundaries my son sets on sharing.

This would look better in yellow, no? How soft the world got when I drank, everything sort of hazy and glowing, and then abruptly turning wild and bright, unmistakably violent, shards of iron in the blood hailing angry kings with no qualms about sending young soldiers to die.

Understanding transcends orgasm. The kids joke, Mom is the Queen of the Country of Turtles, Dad is the Magistrate of Pancakes.

Writing when I should not be, apparently that old trick still works. As a child I climbed trees to find crows, wanted to raise one, later killed one with a shotgun, repented even as it happened, still repenting.