orion.

Tall grass feels a bit too much like home. Through it, she pulls me along like she’s been here before and it wouldn’t surprise me. She talks and talks and talks. She only does it because normally I devour her every word. That’s why I get to explore Carolina fields with the prettiest girl at the university. I give my attention away better than anyone. This field, this grass are unwelcome right now. My eyes want to look down, but I know I’ll see it – my identity written on the long blades. Even without acknowledging the poking sensation in my legs, I can’t stop picturing my sister and I laying together on matted grasses. I’m trying not to go there, but I see my sister’s pretty face anyways. As I slip back into the conversation, my tour guide somehow found her way onto the topic of politics. I feel especially sick now and I almost want to think about my old house. The big trees, the solace.

Eventually, my companion maneuvers us to the river where she sits on a fallen tree by the water. Instead of sitting I walk to the threshold of the water by almost no power of my own. The beauty behind me talks now about our college’s poor response to a local emergency. A topic that would normally secure my opinion now doesn’t even provoke me to face her. I miss my family. On the other side there are white blooms hanging over the rivers frame. The long, lean branches sway in the wind and the ivory blossoms bob in unison.

“Did you hear about that?” She interrupts.
“No. I...”
“You seem distracted. Everything ok?”

I’m given the option of sharing myself, but what do I say? Tell her that my father could name the constellations off the a river’s reflection with his young daughter on his shoulders? Something she neither cares about nor would understand. Or that I’d trade a thousand nights with her for one hour laying in the grass with them?

“I’m ok. What were you saying about the dean?”

She continues, but I’m no longer hers. I’m held captive by a string of memories. I try to remember something my Dad said about women who talk too much. Maybe something about the difference between noisy crows and doves that gaze silently at you. I wish I could remember and I wish I knew the constellations.

Everything and Nothing at All

The wind shifts and a thousand leaves quiver above my head.  I pull the wool of my collar up higher, but warmth cannot erase their whispers.  They know—I know they know.   My mother comes up from behind me and clasps my hand.  Hers are cold and thin, cloaked by wrinkles and time.  Her wire frame looks so frail against the towering oak—powerless.  I squeeze her hand a little tighter, but I’m cautious.  I try to exercise restraint.  I’m scared of squeezing it too tight, I’m scared of not squeezing hard enough, but either way she gives me nothing.

She does not speak, she never has.  She simply tilts her head to the side and lets a tear discreetly roll off the weathered peak of her face, and tilts it back.  She stares at the tree tenderly, mournfully. I just stare.

* * *

I was eleven when she told my uncles to bury him four feet deeper.  She wanted to leave room for the roots, not that anyone asked—no one cared.  They simply did what they were told.  But a foot from finishing  I took the shovel from their hands and buried him six.  I packed the dirt tight, so when my mother came with the sapling she hit me with an open hand and cried.  She clawed at the earth with her fingers for hours.  My uncles took me inside and let her.  I laid in bed for the rest of the day and played with my cheek, putting pressure on it till I felt the warmth flush my face and sting.

She came in my room that night and for a second I thought my father had raised from the dead.  I laid still and pretended to be asleep.  I wanted to pray but I didn’t know what to ask for anymore.  So I just alternated please and thank you over and over in my head and hoped that it would do.  I felt dry lips press against my forehead and crusty fingers brush back my hair.  But they were gentle and fair.  I released a heavy sigh that gave myself away.  She whispered sorry and disappeared.  That night I tossed and turned.  I kept trying to wipe off the dirt that fell in my bed but no matter what I did I always found more.  I tried not to care, I knew I’d never hear those words again.

* * * 

A yellow leaf drifts from the tree and brushes my face.  I swat it down and resist the urge to crush it beneath my feet. Twenty years later his touch still makes me cringe.  My mother tries not to notice.  The cold coffee and toast I forced down for breakfast begins to rebel against me; the acid in my stomach rises and my brow instinctively furrows.  It frustrates me how reactionary it is.  Makes me feel strung up like a marionette, unable to tell myself when to breath or blink or cry.  I just do.  Even in death he still pulls the strings.

My eyes begin to water and I feel myself constrict, my mother lets my hand fall.  I cannot tell whether I feel heavier or lighter. 

The tears burn paths down my skin and mix with the earth.  I can’t tell whose I am. 

I collapse at the feet of my mother, and beat at the earth with my fists.  I cannot tell whether I’m old or young.
 

The wind wails, the leaves shudder and I feel moved by everything, and nothing at all. 

She turns away and solemnly takes her seat in a rusted folding chair, attempting to take shelter in the shadow of a beast she never could outrun.  I close my eyes in no spirit at all, and try to muster a please and thank you to a God I pray is not my father.

Quinn's Picture

I can still see her in his eyes. When we sit in those chairs, it feels like I should let him be alone. I know if I leave him alone that he will break. Relationships need caring and tending to like old mine shafts. It’s not a clean job at all, and there’s always a chance that it will collapse on you. So I decided to turn my head lamp on and go in. I continue to sit there while he silently weeps off and on, tormented by love lost. The sun is setting. Even I still hold the feelings of hurt and abandonment. Tonight, every time I think about her I cry.

We were both there when she died. He sat next to and held onto his love of 53 years as she slipped away. It was a death that I wouldn’t have wished upon any living being, especially a person that meant so much to me. When the nurse came in and confirmed that she was gone, he kissed her one last time and said goodbye.

These two chairs have been here since the day I was born. They represent relationships. It was the conversational spot for all of us grandchildren. She would grab some oranges off the tree by the house and sit with us in the same spot to talk and watch the sun set. She always had a way of inserting wisdom in a non threatening way. I had no problem sharing my deepest secrets with her while cars drove by and the wind gently blew our hair.

It was there that I told her about the first boy I decided to date. It was there I learned about Jesus. It was there we often laughed for hours about nothing. It was there, that she was no longer.

He still weeps. I place my head on his shoulder, and together, we watch the sun set. He places his old cracked fingers on my hand and squeezes tightly. When a person can’t express something in words, especially love, they squeeze hands. I knew exactly what he meant.

Quinn's picture!!!

Remember the old high top chairs out back, our chairs? The ones we took out of my grandpa’s old shed? We put them by the river bend and talked our adolescence away. It’s hard to think that was five years ago, maybe if I had known then what we both know now it could have been different? 

You were my best friend you know? I liked the way all the other girls at school would snicker as I walked past them. I was standing next to you and you wanted me there. You chose me. Of course it wasn’t the same for them as it was for me. I was never in love with you. Had I know then that you felt the opposite…well…well maybe I wouldn’t have let it get to where it went. 

It was after that spring shower, remember? The water had risen in the river; everyone cried it was going to be a one hundred year flood, the worst of its kind. But we didn’t care. All we cared about was that the water was finally high enough that we could dive in without hitting our heads. 

I miss those endless hours of watching your skin glisten as you would call me to jump in after you. I can almost hear it, “Nina, come in! Come on!” We were still innocent then, you know? Like we had everything and wanted nothing. Well not until that night when you wanted to know more. Remember what you asked me?

“Do you wonder if?” you asked your head down avoiding my eyes as your voice began to trail off. We were sitting on the cold ground. Your hands rustled with the weeds while your mind wrestled with your thoughts.

“Do I ever wonder if what?” I replied as I spit the sun flower seeds out of my mouth. The sun was setting and there was a slight breeze that sent a chill through my wet body and caused goose bumps. I had no idea what you were talking about. 

I was a sixteen year old country girl who had been raised by her daddy and brothers.  Men were nothing but best friends and allies to me.  So you can imagine my confusion when you leaned in and kissed me there. On that sacred land, our land, our spot, next to our chairs.

I didn’t pull away. But I didn’t return either. I guess I was old enough to wonder what it all felt like. But looking back I think should have stopped you when you pulled me closer. When your hand began to push against the small of my back and found its way under my shirt. It didn’t even register when you began to lean me back so softly and your grip so strong I didn’t feel the ground moving closer to me.

“I’ve always wanted this with you,” you said. “You whispered it so low and soft that my head felt hazy as a soft sensation shot up my spine. 

I suppose in that moment I wanted it too. 

I can’t remember when or how my clothes came off. But I do remember the softness of your touch, the gentleness in your voice, and love in your actions.  It was the first for us both. 

Standing here now, I see the decaying chairs untouched since that sunset five years ago. I feel the loss in my heart for my friend who will no longer speak to me. Afterwords you were so happy, jubilant even. And me? Well it’s funny how one moment of your life; one choice can throw you into a whirlwind of uncertainty. After that moment I no longer knew who I was. I no longer knew why I felt the way I felt. I know longer knew you.

 I guess all I wanted to do in coming here today was to say, “I’m sorry.”

the window and the mirror.

That stainless steel bowl in her hands is starting to bother me. She is stirring something that looks like batter, so I’m sure she’s baking for friends or new neighbors. She presses her ear into the phone and when she laughs, stirs faster. I watch her through the window from my spot outside of the house. This chair under the trees is my sanctuary, away from the world, away from her. I read, hang with the neighbors, be silent, and sit with my dog. Yet, I’m not away really from her at all. I continue to haunt her. She talks on the phone and looks vacantly right at me, but doesn’t acknowledge me. As usual, she is preoccupied by something else – gossip, dishes, a joke, baking, anything really. There was a time where she would wave or smile at me, now it’s the landscape around me she digests. She looks through me, and does not see me.

I stare hard enough to see the flour on her purple apron. She walks away from the window. These small rejections are starting to mount for me, so I try to focus on something else. This land is my retreat. My Dad built this farmhouse for my mom 50 years ago and as the only son, it became mine by default. I didn’t earn it and don’t really know how to take care of it, but it eases my mind in moments like this. The dog pops his head up as a truck slowly approaches. It’s old Cam. He sputters by and holds up a steady calloused hand. I wave back with my pathetic soft hand. The truck gets going as slow as it stopped, but surely it makes its way down the road until it’s a pea on the horizon. I look back at the window and she’s gone. The chair cracks as I stretch out and lean back into the sun. Things sound different out here. I like it. Every noise is dampened, yet magnified by the silence. The dog jumps up at the sound of a faint whistle and darts around the side of the house for a meal. She never forgets to feed him. Or forgets anything really. The chores on this land are enough to keep two people occupied for a lifetime. It overwhelms me every day, but it doesn’t seem to bother her. Suddenly she reappears in the window. On the phone again. My mind begins to sink into darkness, then it strikes me.

I need the window. It’s not a mirror looking back at myself that grows me. It’s a window. It’s separateness that I need. A woman with a force on the earth that I can’t control or manipulate. She is her own beating heart with ambitions and loves different from my own. She needs to bake. The best thing she has to offer me is her strange and complete uniqueness. The tearing and meshing at which we meet in the middle is only a bonus to how extraordinary she is. I sit stunned.

In the midst of cleaning up the kitchen she stops directly in front of the window and looks out. I’m not sure if she is looking at me. I smile and wave to her. She smiles back, disappears momentarily, then reappears in the window with a large smile holding up the cake she just baked. It has my name written on it.

Mornings

I wrote this a while ago, but I think I might keep going with it.




The beast awakens from her slumber.

Deep breathing, and icy cold eyes peeking from the dark, warm cave.
She can hear the other animals frolicking around like it's summer time, but it's not summer time.
They are different breeds, so they naturally don't understand her sleep patterns, but it's ok because she doesn't understand theirs.
She's not looking for change, just acceptance.
Ready to be in quiet. Ready for complete peace, dreaming of the meal she had slaughtered the night before.

But her readiness can not compete with the lively pace at which the earth is spinning today.
At which the excited dogs are singing to each other in their hunger.
She can not escape. She can not communicate. Because they are oblivious.

They remind her continually, "it's day time, it's day time, it's day time."

She knows.

And she's waiting for the sun to go back down. She likes to roam, and to quietly take in the world when the leaves are settled and conflict in the busy lives of the local frogs and rodents has decided to go to bed.
Survival of the fittest at it's prime.
The moon at night is brighter, and her shadow darker.
The anticipation of finding something beautiful in the night never ends, and she always finds something beautiful.
Nature tells her that she's safe, she doesn't have to worry or doubt. She doesn't have to be happy or sad. She doesn't have to be wrong or right. Nervous or confident. In love, or out of love.
Just be.
Just listen.

She returns to her cave in the dawn of her adventures.
There, she lay.
There, she is but a figment of every Morning's imagination.

this picture.

My uncle owns several acres in Bend, Oregon and about ten years back he built a beautiful country style two story home on the lot. There is a pond, farm animals, a garden, and random pets everywhere-It has the makings of a real country house. Last summer my mom and I decided to take a road trip down the west coast and we made an obligatory one night stop in Bend. I slept in a guest room that was appropriately decorated with quilts, etc. I don’t sleep well away from home and especially in uncomfortable beds, so I was up at dawn. For those who haven’t been to the northwest in the summer, the sun doesn’t set until 10pm every night and it rises really early. I was fortunate to wake up at dawn to get some awesome pictures. I had my old 35mm Minolta (RIP), that took random shots I couldn’t control. This was one of them. The lighting it captured is difficult to describe. To my right is a large pond, about 50 yards behind me is the house and to my left is the “main” road. I was just wandering around the land and stumbled across the two random lawn chairs tucked under some beautiful trees in a quiet part of the land. It was really cold and the sun is the only thing that warms up the northwest. Well, that’s my setup, it’s your turn to write something inspired by this picture.

I think I have a novel pent up inside me.

However, haven't had the time to quit life and write like I'd like. 

I see it as the first person narrative of a marriage, wracked (wrecked?) by an affair.  I'm interested in exploring passion and heartache and how those two things so often come hand in hand.  I'd like it to jump through time so that you're reading excerpts of the falling in love process interspersed with pain. Here's a little:

I don’t realize exactly when it happens but I start to see you everywhere.  You are in the books I read, first in the interesting thoughts and phrasings that I know your writer’s mind would connect with.  I resist the urge to email you, chat you, text you, call you constantly with quoted passages.  I buy you a book, the first that makes me think of you so overwhelmingly that I am called by some primal urge to purchase it, wrap it. 

(I put more thought than is reasonable into how to present it to you, settling on the wrapping paper supplied gratis at the bookstore so I don’t seem overwrought but then go and purchase a lovely, thick grosgrain ribbon that I hope effectively communicates both your insistence upon quality and your masculine nature, and also my designer’s mind.)  You seem pleased but you never mention it again and I feel shy and ridiculous for putting myself so far out on a limb of my own construction.  It’s a gesture I don’t repeat, even after we are intimate. 

Then, I see you in the characters that inhabit my fiction. 

Then, you recommend books to me-first you mention then, then you lend me some of your favorite tomes and I am almost unable to crack them for the weightiness I imagine they bring to me.  To us.  I hear your voice when I read them-silly fiction to entertain me, books in religion and philosophy that feel like they’re long lost friends and finally, a book of your favorite poetry.  Your friends are thinkers and writers, too, so you are mentioned here and there in what I read and the first glance of your name transmits a golden hot jolt throughout my veins.  My heart’s thudding returns to normal, but I start devouring the missives with a greater urgency hoping for another interaction with you, as seen by someone else.

Let's talk!

Okay guys, tell me a little about your inspirations to write.
What makes those creative juices flow. What pushes you to put down that remote, turn off that movie, and sit down and just write it out?

For me it's a lot of things. Mostly emotions.
But things that inspire me?
Movies.
Books.
Songs.
People.
Dr. Mario.

scotland 4am.

I know its not much, but this is one of my favorite photos I've taken. This is a writers blog, so forgive me, but I wanted to post this somewhere.

a tender man.

He spoke. Tears fell on his torn black coat. “I fell from her grace and she won’t let me return. Banished from her presence forever I wander eternally in a haze of regret. Her silent coldness shatters my heart.”

Affected by his brokenness the sovereign monarch wept with him. Her graceful empathy was the very thing that put her in power. She sheltered the poor man in her kingdom and nothing was withheld from him. Her pity, though, soon turned to envy. And she too, had him banished.

This is a small excerpt from my story... I started writing it not thinking it would be in the story initially, but loved it so much I had to find room to add it. There is much more to the piece but just wanted to share this moment. :)

As the new morning broke through the sky Ryell walked outside on his way to work. He looked to the East and there he could see a handful of people walking up towards the mountain. Every morning those same people made the hike and every morning Ryell watched them. Today they were noticeably one less. Clio, would never take that hike again.

                Ryell looked back at the small apartment they shared and looked upon the tiny addition that was built in the corner next to the alley way. When Clio had become too sick to make the hike Ryell made a bamboo mat and placed it in the corner. He used old ply wood and cloth to create a room. A little shrine for her to prey in. It was not the same as the vigorous walk up the mountain. Breathing the frosty mountain air and existing amongst the dew moist trees, but he wanted Clio to feel like she had a place to go. He remember how he placed the wild mountain flowers, in recycled tin and jars that he had found along the roads, around the tiny lot. He had bartered for a single stick of incense and let it fill the room with strong smoke of jasmine and wet wood. He put his bedding in a corner for her to sit on while she meditated and prayed. The room was peaceful and in its own way pretty.

                She had been sleeping when he came in to get her. He was so eager to show her the new studio. Something he could give just to her. He picked her up and carried her lame body across the apartment and through the door outside. Her arms were wrapped around his neck and she nestled her head into his neck as she watched happily to see where he was taking her. The morning was cold and the frost pinched at her nose and made her eyes dry. Even in her sickness, Clio was unaltered by her unjust fate. She smiled, laughed, and then cried as Ryell gently placed her upon the mat. She looked around the tiny temple with awe and excitement.

 “Is it wrong of me to be so happy thinking it is a gift for me, when it is really meant for God?” she asked smiling at Ryell.

He stood leaning against the door looking down at her on her knees, smiling as he shook his head. 

“No,” it’s not wrong he replied. He had never thought of it as a gift to God. It was in Ryell’s mind for Clio, and nothing more.