Exhaustion

There's tired.  And then there's the kind of tired where your feet drag on the sidewalk, where the spoon drifts away between bowl and target.  Where you wish the chatter in your mind could be stilled long enough to sleep for eight hours - or even six. 

And you wonder: Perhaps the problem is only waiting to be solved until I stop mothering it.  Perhaps, if I were able to look the other way, the plants could creep from their hiding places underground and blossom into color.

Courage

It's almost worse when someone hurts you unintentionally and doesn't even know what they've done.  If they had set out to filet your soul, you can have some satisfaction.  You can lick the sour candy taste of pain from your mind; you can quietly dodge or take punches like a man; you can magnanimously forgive.  But there is no courage, no valor to be found in being hurt ignorantly.  There is only a sudden realization that you aren't as important as you thought -- and then nothing remains but to limp away slowly and prepare to be trod upon again.

Emaciated

It's the sort of thin that makes you believe a good fit is completely quixotic -- where everything hangs or pulls, stretching taut over the wrong places and glumly bunching in others.  It filters into every crevice.  Trouble comes in bunches; and emotional emaciation is no different, becoming the lenses through which you experience church, school, work, home.  Bilbo Baggins' apt description of "butter over too much bread" sums my feelings today.  The ring of power wears me thin.


I have suggested alternatives to my husband, but he will none of them.  He supposes (rightly, I concede) that the alternatives are like climbing out of the taffy to stand in the tar.  So today I seek fulness of grace in cookie dough and ludicrously long showers, trying to fill the gaping hole instead of diagnosing it.

Nuan Wa, and other unsuitable names

Titles advertise.  They are sandwich boards of the writing world, vulgarly proclaiming artistic contents found inside the author's stores.  Even lovely titles steal some vestige of mystery from unopened covers.
From now on, I shall refer to all my writing as "Untitled [Poem]," "Untitled [Blog]," "Untitled [Story]."  Or I could just adopt my children's teacher's naming technique and refer to things by their nearest object.  In such case, this blog would be entitled, "Broken First Aid Kit Case."

White Rice

My friend Betsy won't make rice anymore. Tiny
toddler hands fingerpaint

sticky white grains
grind pale beads
into blue carpet, she says.
On hands and knees
picking mashed, tacky
blobs of boogers
out of baby hair and nude upholstery

rice seems a practical sort of phobia.

yet, as it dries under her table,
starchy water again escapes
pops and spits
and resists..

Nearly two months later, life has resumed its chaotic swagger toward insanity. The blog, clearly, does not rank in this strength of maelstrom. However, I have recently been considering the relative importance of meditation; thus, Seurat writing may have a chance at resurrection.

The Voyages of the Jolly Roger

I am considering writing a young adult book in iambic pentameter. The story and I have wrestled for nearly a year without success, but now I wonder if blank verse may give it the structure it needs.

More research is needed.