~OR~
What I Did Instead of Falling Asleep
“For You”
The whole night’s sky
All the stars
a message
reflecting:
“You are loved; you are safe”
The tide
pushed towards you
Blue ocean
come to call
a reminder:
“You are wanted; you are missed”
The flower-bright sunrise
Mountain tops
the cloud line
A new world
a promise:
Mornings to come
Your place
My heartbeat
a hammock
swaying, sweetly
“My love, my love”
“He woke up every morning, thinking that today would be a new and distinctly different day, that somehow newness was possible, as long as he didn’t remember what had come before.
Which is why he tried to remember only his dreams, as if they were the one solid truth in a sea of memory.
People, thoughts, indignities, shouts, caresses, sincerity and faking it. Ebbing and flowing. Each wave new and just like the one before it. Each night’s dreams an unremarkable revelation, which is why–after a time spent chronicling them with sincere devotion and optimism into a blue suede journal purchased for that express purpose–he eventually gave it up, leaving both dreams and memories to others more sturdy or more creative than himself.
He left the journal to bleach in the sun.
Like sun leaking through the shutters of the window, he felt warmth in small, straight, disconnected lines. There was no, he realized, grand narrative into which it all fit. No satisfying, complete story to tell. His dreams were lies that somebody else whispered into his mind while he lay helpless. Creativity, true creativity, lie in thinking about himself as a thin, straight line of warm humanity touching others while they lay trapped in their dreams.”
* * *
(Written Saturday, May 25th, 2013 on the semi-enclosed outdoor patio at Design Festa Cafe & Bar, Harajuku, Tokyo. It was around 10 o’clock, after karaoke. Chad suggested we play exquisite corpse, passing a notebook back and forth, each writing a sentence, a thought or paragraph. And this is what we made 🙂
Chad and I fell in love through writing. Did you know? We met volunteering, flirted tenaciously, felt parallel panic, talked like we’d known each other forever, and then fell into an easy-yet-awkward (and very much sporadic) penpalmanship.
We would check in via letter, or email (or–let’s be honest–facebook) every six months to a year. Then drift off into our own separate lives.
Except one time that didn’t happen. One time we just kept writing. And writing. And writing, until we’d written a book–228 pages of hopes, fears, and things that you’d never want your parents to read.
Anyways, so that’s what we know, and what we come back to, though we’ve also been known to talk on the phone for hours at a time, or stay up all night diving into the oceans of each others minds. Or–lets be honest–watch a movie and then go to bed at 9pm.
And one time (just once), we played around with our new iPhones, dictating random thoughts to Siri to see what she’d turn them into. And that one time, I asked Chad to talk about “what it would be like if we had a kitty cat.”
Then Siri gave us the following, which I have transcribed into poem format. Because it is truly poetic. Thank you, iPhone. Thank you, Siri. Thank you, Chad.
* * *
What Would it Be Like if We Had a Kitty Cat?
What would it be like if we had a kitty cat?
Odelays, and having a KitKat
(that we got to snuggle with)and had the to-take for you
Catwalks, in the looking
Little Kitty Cat(and I’m bad)
and then we were–I’m pretty
Nake-Etiquette
daycare, Oberlin
Good little kitty cat
Mayonaise
(and I don’t get off)
~OR~
The Facts:
I bought my dress second-hand, paid for it in cash. $32.61. I knew as soon as I tried it on that it was the dress I would get married in. A winter wedding dress.
~OR~
City Mice and the Country Mouse
Last Sunday we took a field trip up to Garland, Utah–Bonnie Friend’s hometown.
She grew up on a farm, with horses, sheep, farm cats and apple trees.
We dreamed of petting barnyard animals.
Monday morning I rode my bike to work, like I do, 6am and black as night. I took a spill in the employee parking lot at work, my first in nearly a year, thrown off by Tom the Roaster in his big van. Knocked my basket loose and everything. Scraped my knee, hurt my wrist, bruised my elbow, but not a big deal. Honestly, I was kind of looking forward to telling the story. I definitely thought it was the worst bike-related incident that would happen to me that day.
I was so wrong, Friends!
Because when I walked back out the kitchen door 6 hours later, my black milk crate basket was on the ground. I thought it had fallen off my bike, but then raised my eyes some centimeters to see that there was no bike. Bike gone. Bike stolen. Bike n’est pas.
Oh, Friends, oh Friends. Just the biggest bummer ever, and I had the same inappropriate response that people sometimes have when grieving–a big, shit-eating grin on my face as I told my coworkers “Somebody stole my bike.” Then I had to carry home my coffee smelling possessions in that little milk crate clutched tight to my chest, like somebody who’s just cleaned out their cubicle.
I felt like maybe there was an actual raincloud above my head.
When I first moved to Spain my friend Laura was having boy troubles, caught between two guys that she was seeing at the same time without either of them knowing about the other. It wasn’t something she’d planned on, but like many things in life, the situation just sort of escalated.
~OR~
Your Idea, Not Mine
Life was really, really good just then, and she told him so. A quick text sent while balancing her bike, laden basket-heavy with booze, snacks, a change of clothes. Toothpaste, toiletries. Waiting while Espy lugged her own steel horse down the steep steps, where they would pick up where they’d left off–positing halfheartedly about the necessity of courtship in our modern day, or gushing about graphic novels and artists and style. Her hands and feet puffed like cotton balls from summer’s sudden, lackadaisical reappearance, dry heat like a reminder, an afterthought. A sigh.
I used to write all sorts of things–poetry, prose, vignettes, fiction. Nowadays I mostly do this, plus a letter here and there, and then my journal. When I’m feeling good to myself, or when I’m feeling alone.
I used to write things that rhymed, that followed a form.
I used to read these things out loud, in front of people, to dare to expose myself. I used to say openly that I wanted to be a writer.
Was it naivete? Or just one of the many pieces of myself that I let fall by the wayside?
Lately, I’ve been picking up the pieces. Saturday night, in my delirium, I wrote something that rhymes.
little sarah Big World 