Attention

If you read the notes,

Yes, sorry, please

At the bottom below your signature

There it is. I don't know why it was

Missed. A huge clusterfuck

Fly me down to Florida. Or up to Vermont

Pick the problem. I'll sort it out. 

Note it and present

No, I don't think they saw the notes

As well, it will work out. Somehow

As It Was

I've finished mourning

In my memories you will always

Catch the sword as the music crests

And, gather the cars and warm the room

With long long looping wires that tether

Me, to a moment of lost papers returned 

You'll always be on the roof

Me, nervous you'll fall, albeit you are

Invincible and Dynamic. Eternal

We built a chair with no instructions 

And told the bourgeoisie to go home

I said the thing and blazed red waiting your response

I'll still hear your hundreds of stories.

Doctor, sailor, lawyer, secretary, and spy

I'll hear your rumors, the incriminating 

Screen snips of the gossip, the tea spilled

Like the water from broken pipes on 3rd

You'll be traveling. The south of Mexico

And tour of all the ballpark

They'll be quirky earrings with black cats

Enamel pins and memes, shared like jail house smokes. There will be a crack of lacrosse sticks, a sound I've never heard but remember through you.

I've finished mourning

The space around gets bigger, the loss

Stays the same; gnawing, dull, toxic

When Isolated, it loses its bite and

Toothless, you revert to better memories

And, the sobering dawn that we are

Each other's history

Long Night of Solace

I think I'm going to put the blog formally on hiatus. I've reached a comfortable nadir in my life, edging between depression and spurts of creativity. These things always sound better in my head and I often write in secret. Very early before everyone wakes up, usually, albeit now I just want to sleep.

I'll read poetry and no longer feel I want to write something so cutting. Instead I feel tiny and envious and angry. Over something that someone, on a good day, maybe got paid 200 dollars for and sits published in a dusty book in the back o beyond of your local library. 

I won't delete it. And, I think I'll pop back when I feel I have something to say to put to digital paper. 

Don't worry about me. I know I live a life of extraordinary privilege. Even when I'm bluesy and do not look forward to going to the office (which is every day, am I right), I am fortunate to have what I have. It's late stage capitalism. I think we all have the right to be bluesy, just different degrees of it.

If you read this and enjoyed it, then thank you! 

If you read this and didn't, then thank you for reading. Maybe you stumbled on it and felt what is this boring little spiraling thing.

See everyone later!

Snow Day # 8

Sandy went first, everyone begrudgingly saying they would give this a try. She knew the opening verses of The Illiad and The Odyssey by heart, something she said made her a natural to go first.

She sat cross legged on a pile of yoga mats she had unrolled onto the open floor of the tower office. "Please don't tell Meg I moved her mats without asking. I'll wipe them down and everything once we are done." Everyone knew what this meant. The gym teacher had an uncanny ability to know the inventory of every ball and roller scooter and jump rope in the school. Growing up she had worked at her parents video store in a small VT town and knew everyone's phone numbers by heart.

Sandy got some polite smiles and acknowledgements. John Johnson, on a brief break from keeping the boiler running, feigned zipping his lips and tossing the key.

Sandy looked at the group and the Yellow lights of the ceiling flickered against her glasses. "OK, so here is what I got...

I grew up in a town called Nelsonville, OH which was in between Logan and Athens, where Ohio University is. It's the part of the state where you are far away from any of the major cities and it's not defined by any river or lake or farm field but by hills. There is not much to do in Nelsonville from October to May. During the summer, it's great. Hocking Hills and hiking and outdoorsy stuff. There are rental cabins everywhere and even my parents dabbled in it until my younger brother was born and it was a lot to keep two households and two kids and full time jobs. My dad worked grounds at Hocking College and my mom worked at Peoples Community Credit union. Nothing high powered but it was a lot especially in high season.

These cabins are very popular on AirBNB and VRBO. All those vacation apps. So, it's easy to find them but you also can spot them since the cars change every couple of days. Some different car in the driveway every weekend. Things like that.

So, when we were bored in high school, which was often, we cruised the cabins and tried to see if we could sneak back to use their hot tubs. Not all of them had them but most did. They were usually well hidden from the road but you got the lay of the land pretty quick.


We would idle on the road and have someone sneak back. We would call sometimes and ask "Oh are you booked?" Or message on the apps using phony accounts. We did our due diligence to see if we were ok beacuse we did not want someone shooting us or anything like that.

Just the aching Nissan Sentra of my neighbor, Christy, and four of us jammed into it. We were all in swim suits and one guy, Jason, insisted on always being shirtless. We are driving down Sr691 to take a turn onto Blue Ash road or Opossum Hollow looking like it's Santa Monica. And it's March because it's spring break. My senior year.”


“When did you graduate high school again?” Alexis asked.

“2015. I did take a year between it and college to work for and save money to pay for tuition. Anyway, we find a place. The Arrowhead. It's this log cabin in all blonde wood and big floor to ceiling glass windows. It faces an actual triangle shaped and inside it has at least three mounted deer heads”

Sandy leaned forward clutching a bunched up hoodie in her hands and then sliding it through her fingers.

“The Arrowhead was the place to hot tub jump. It was off the main road down a dipping driveway that cuts through a mess of tangled trees. It's like driving into a mess of wires. We didn't even drive. We parked on the road and then ran down the driveway. If not we would be trapped.”

Zoey crossed her arms. The tower windows let all the cold in. They were single pane and striping long dry rotted away. She imagined Sandy freezing running down this driveway in beach get ups. whether it was the actual temp or something psychosomatic, she felt it at the center of her chest and creeping across her skin.

“This day, it's perfect. It's cold but not like today. No snow and plenty of sun. Arrowhead a dead give away. If it was Tuesday and there were no garbage cans on the main road then it was a good chance it was empty. Jason goes and check and he does this in just board shorts and sneakers. We wait in the car blasting heat and smoking cigarettes out the wide open windows. It feels like hours but we see his long arms wave us from bottom of the dip. The coast is clear." Sandy stops and flits her eyes almost as if she were digging for the memory.

Zoey still kept her arms against herself. Why was she so cold? "Wait, wouldn't the hot tub be freezing? Do people leave them running? My aunt had one growing up and it took forever to warm up." 

"Oh, they were often. Some folks left the idling and that was nice. It was more about saying you did it. Again, we were very bored and cell service, still today, is awful in that part of Athens County. We just wanted to say we did it and maybe snap some pics to share. Like, we got into the Arrowhead!"

Zoey nodded and also brought her legs against herself.

"Ok, so to the good part! Jason did jack the hot tub up. This one was in economy mode." She looked at Zoey and smiled "Lucky us." She then threw her eyes to the whole group. "So we jumped in. I dropped my head under the water, on a dare since it was still lukewarm, and when I came up, I could see someone in the cabin."

Alexis interrupted "Oh please don't tell me they shot at you."

"Yeah, serpentine bob and weave, Sandy" Carlos said trying to get a laugh

"No. My entire body froze. Imagine dropping a log into a pond and how it bobs up and down until it just floats? That was me. Except this person was more a figure. All black except for this tan and brown floral dress. It, she, did not seem to have hair or eyes. It just stood there."

No one said anything, the silence suggesting to keep going

"I grab Christy and say 'Someone is in the house!' Everyone loses their mind panicking until there is no one in the plate glass window on the upper deck. Instead, the figure, the woman, is now maybe 10 feet away from us, behind the sliding glass doors to the deck. She bangs on the glass and everyone is locked onto her. At this distance we can see her face. Its ancient and injured and her lips curled back to reveal a mouth full of nothing but canine teeth. She rocks back and forth, palming the glass with increasing aggression. When she hits the glass, scabs of skin fall off her arms. She starts to gnash her teeth and her mouth is black framed by the gleaming teeth. That all seems unhurt and powerful on her, against the broken burnt skin of her body.

Sandy pauses again and drinks from a tumbler holding a mango hard seltzer. Before all this Carlos had come back from the bodega in a walk that took an hour to go a few blocks. 

"We all pour over each other trying to get out of the tub. There is no decorum and consideration. We don't care about the cover. Don't care that we left towels there. It is just grab your phone and scream down the driveway. Like, I'm in a two piece and have one flip flop on. When we dive into Christy's car, I have mud all over my legs and gravel that flew up from the driveway and into my hair.

"Did she chase you?" John had been silent through all of this.

"No. Or, I didn't notice. Christy blasted down the road with the side doors still open and we never went back to the Arrowhead."

***Writer's Note: It likely does not seem like it, but, for this bit of  fiction, I did sketch out a rough set of ideas. This last bit is where it ends. The combination of being forty, everyday responsibilities (the adulting as the kids say), and easy distractions of short form content and video games also work against me in trying to do anymore. In addition these are the "shitty first draft" versions of everything and ones written in isolation. Don't count it out, but likely will be much more infrequent and likely less serialized. ***

Grief

Asked to describe grief, Ill use an analogy
A tennis ball in a Mason jar
Don't ask me how it got there.

Its tight against the sides and a statement yellow

The ball does not get smaller,  but, over time

The space around the jar gets bigger.

There is more time and air and distance between the now

And the past, the tennis ball. The grief

If given more time and attention

Ill still use an analogy. 

Palimpsests on the page that once were in high relief

And slowly sink back to the college ruled loose leaf

Its also the creases of the folds that are sharper and bite

This makes everything salient and spiraling

Tactile and physical, my grief is a note written years ago

In neat block letters with crystal bank ledger pens

It doesn't matter what it says. Instead, how it feels

Types on the phone and in one's feelings. a dangerous combination

While I often send someone an errant text or meme saying "This made me think of you!" it's something I've rarely experienced. 

When I'm deep in self pity it must be because why would anyone care to send something. Right? 

When I'm a bit grounded it's beacuse they are busy or, let's be sincerely practical and honest, have actual engaged conversations with others. We just went to high school together or worked together five years ago. Didn't go to war together or something like that.

It could also just be life and people ilare too paralyzed by being there for everyone but themselves. Why bother engaging? Sometimes at work I'll responded with a quip or meme in Teams chat and get no responses. No heart of LOL emojis. Why bother engaging? They know I saw it and likewise they also took a glance.

Writing fiction is exhausting. Even crummy ones like what has been on the blog. I can't help but feel like a memory thief putting situations on the page that I want to make my own but are just clippings of lived experiences. Other people's experiences. My greatest fear is not that someone will read it and say this sucks. Instead that they will read it and say "Oh this is like when we went on thay trip to Alaska" or "Is this character supposed to be so and so?"

In college I would do short story readings in public. Horrible open mic nights on random Wednesdays or sad brown Friday nights. I could read to groups of strangers but never a friend, significant other or family.  They would know and surgically extract. "You are less like an onion and more of an orange," said a coworker to me once as we discussed annual reviews. "It's a hard exterior but just being real sweet and honest inside. It's a good thing, really. I think you care more than what you want people to think." 

I'm writing this as an excuse to not finish my story. I want to sound wise but feels like there is not much more to say. I've peaked. I want to say it was 2009 and 2013 and 2018 that were the highlights. A roller coaster now building energy to help someone else go.

Snow Day #7

 Zoey saw the chat come to life on her phone. "World's Worst Sleepover". Her stomach sank to a the same weird spot reserved for expected bad news. Not a spot of pessimism but the same feeling she had her junior year of undergrad when she spent a summer taking her aging childhood dog, Brownie, to the vet. It was a series of dwindling returns that just announced his eventual passing, which happened after she had returned to school. That semester she took a Latin American Literature class and they read Chronicle of a Death Foretold, a story she can't remember but whose title stuck with her. Chronicle of a day wasted evening made furiously awkward. 

She hoped the snow would miraculously stop. Or, at least, relent. Enough for her to creep home after hanging in her room. She had changed, which maybe was her way of silently acknowledging the reality, but, in the moment, it felt natural. Like taking off your coat when sitting down at a desk. 

Outside it was the Arctic. Her classroom could see the tops of two red maple trees planted her first year on even dreary Cleveland days. Today, it was just blanks. Not sterile or calm. It was the snow that felt menacing. The snow that absorbs all the light around it until its more a slate gray. Snow that pours when you are already boarded for your flight. Snow that falls like powder but acts like concrete.

"You should stay. This storm will kill you!" Her mother texted her that when Zoey first mentioned "Waiting it out for a bit" at the school. Her mother then followed with snowflake, snowman and stop sign emoji. 

If she had to stay then Zoey wanted to hunker in her room. Treat it like the active shooter situations that the guys in black polos, tucked into their jeans, trained her every return to school year. She would lock the door and then pile chairs and furniture by the door. She would drag the vintage two drawer file cabinet to the door ("Sorry, not sorry about the marks on the floor, John Johnson!) and let its steel core heart keep everyone out. She would be ready to fight except without the ersatz weaponry the trainers asked her to master ("Hit them with a Chromebook. The old ones are heavier!" was a dark joke at March Meadow. A sort of cultural meme that no one could remember the origins of) but excuses.

Sandy would come knocking at her door asking to gather in the Tower and tell stories and Zoey would be ready with excuses. 

She had decided against being tired or not feeling well. If that were true then why would she want to be in her room. There were actual cots and couches in the building. if you turned a school upside down and shook it, you would get a lot from the miniature world within it but one thing for sure would be a pharmacies worth of varying medications. Beyond anything that needs to be injected, you could find it in a school. Plus, saying not feeling well reminder her of putting off advances of a horny boyfriend. It felt too much like "I'm not in the mood"

She could pretend to be busy. Zoey was a Pinterest teacher in her first years at March Meadow, when she had homerooms. Every year had a different theme. Under the sea. The universe. Local history. That was the biggest lift but luckily Lebron James was part of local history so that was a layup. However, in latter years, and when she moved to reading intervention, she became a "piles" teacher. Not messy but a "working" space with miscellaneous mugs filled with mismatched markers, pens, and pencils. She had hundreds of books spread across varying shelves, most inherited, but some newer, (Ikea pieces bought with her own money), holding them in a controlled chaos. She knew where everything was but maybe she could say she was organizing. Never waste a crisis. She would be too busy if deciding to organize alphabetically by author or title. Maybe by series. Whichever would take the longest.

What she couldn't do is ghost them. Just pretend like she is not home the same you do when a Jehovah's Witness knocks on the door. People would think she is dead on the floor of her room or dead within a half mile of the school, having tried to get home. Or, people would think she is mad at them, which would then make them mad at her and spiral the collective anxiety into its own superstorm. She imagined if it was Carlos at the door. He had a doomed crush on her that made her feel guilty she didn't reciprocate but then made her angry that she thought that way. He would be (he is actually) OK, but would not want to just ignore him. She would be more comfortable if it was Sandy herself. Or John. Alexis could get her to do it pulling the "rank" card even in this liminal time and space. 

The chat buzzed. She ignored it but saw another text from her mom "Please stay at the school! They told me not to come to the clinic for my shift. That has never happened in 15 years. Stay!"