You and Me, Babe, How 'bout it?

With fear of sounding over dramatic or forcing emotion from the reader like wringing out a rag, I want to tell you something:

There was a day in late July 2014 when I laid on the ground in the hallway outside my kitchen. We have a little runner rug the length of this hallway, and I just laid there on it sobbing. The consequence was all mine. The loneliness was insult to injury. The rubbed-red raw face was par for the course. This was the summer I thought I'd kill myself.

I didn't.

I only had a half-assed plan that probably would have failed -- but, each day that I was groping around in the dark, the plan was solidifying. The only clarity I had was accompanied by guilt -- and it just didn't seem like living was an appropriate response. I was in pain, my husband was in pain, most of my friends wouldn't talk to me, my family felt pity, my hair was falling out, I was losing weight, and I had stopped sitting in chairs, I only sat on the floor and cried about the affair.

That particular day in late July I was visiting my home: husband gone to work, my cats rubbing against my legs, the air smelling strongly of the familiarity I missed since staying in a friend's spare room. I lost my footing. Laid on the rug, cried, and called Sarah Miller Freehauf. Or she called me. I don't remember. I don't remember what she said, exactly. It was something along the lines of "you are still a good person" "still worthy of love" "still my friend" "still able to receive warmth and goodness" "still capable of giving warmth and goodness."

Somehow she convinced me to stand up that day and the many days after.
She and her (new) husband would hug me when others wouldn't look my way.
She called me everyday.
She would quell the panic by reminding me I was human.
She told me funny stories about her mom.
She told me things her mother said in response to my affair.
She picked me up some evenings and forced me to eat bar food.
She cried with me a lot of the time.
She wrote poems for me and about me and about the affair.
She was, by all means, at the ready when I needed her and I always needed her. And she knew it.
She helped save my life.
She was part of the very small troop who helped me off the rug.

I don't necessarily know how to write her a love letter that correctly and comprehensively covers everything I want and need to say, but this is the start of my love letter to her.


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Thank you, Berry. 

Only The Good Die Young

I want to tell you about poetry school. I want to be able to say, shyly, "Who woulda' thought, you know?" and you say, in sweetness, "I thought. I always thought" in the kind of way a dad would say. Except we would both know that you've been worried about my trajectory.

Teach me to change my oil, would ya? And while we're at it, can we conquer the country roads with a manual shift?

Let's sit on the porch and gossip about your neighbor lady, but the good gossip. The "can you believe how earnest she is about keeping strangers out of our yard?" gossip. And the "She's honestly still kicking" and "She never NOT talks about her surgery" gossip. We'd start every sentence with: "I mean, I'm not talking bad, but.." We'd finish (probably) a 12 pack of beer and feel fulled up with the meat of a good-goddamned autumn night.

Tell me the importance of measuring twice, cutting once. Tell me the mistakes you've made, that seemed big, but now are small.

Is everything permanent? If not, why does it seem like concrete has filled the little sacs in my lungs?

We should be crazy one night and buy expensive tickets to a rock and roll show. We can sit and eat up the night; poison it with sentiment. If you wanted, I'd let you tell me about when you fell in love with mom, what it was like in the 80s, the first time you heard Guns'N'Roses, why you stayed with mom, what it was like when your children were born... If you wanted, I'd listen all night, after the music died with the moon. Maybe we'd drink a little bourbon and I'd promise my first born would have your name. Girl or boy.

Maybe one day I'd call you and cry, but I'd call you because I just needed your voice to calm me, like it did when I was a tiny with an upturned nose. You'd say, "Did I ever tell you about that time we were in the abortion clinic - and I looked at your mom and your mom looked at me? Did I tell you what I said?" [Silence] "I said, 'I think we can do this,' and so we left." And that would appease me. That would reaffirm me that at least two people in the whole world, so big/so small, loved me before I even existed. And I'd stop crying. We'd probably make dinner plans. Afterwards, I'd help you weed the garden.

Anyway, I want to tell you about poetry school. But you're dead.

If You Knew How Much I Loved You, Baby, Nothing Could Go Wrong With You

In a few minutes, I'm going to walk through the kitchen and down the hall to my bedroom, put on sunscreen, my swimsuit, pack up Ted Kooser and my journal then walk to the beach. I started a poem and finished a re-write yesterday while my family conquered gulf waves. I was breathing in sand and salt and good vibes; healing up these cuts in my soul. I collected no less than 45 shells, but not perfect shells, partial shells. Because if we're honest, who likes anything that's perfect?

I mean, besides my boobs.

and here's something else I want to say, I went swimming early this morning around 3:30 and Jupiter was hanging out with me. Venus and Jupiter in the same night. I'll take it.

What Sunshine Do You Bring?

I'm writing this for you. Not actually, because knowing would be something completely different. But I think I'm writing this for you. You eat the day, tenderly, with just a tad bit of salt. And the way you brush your hair? I love it. That's why I'm writing this for you. Also, you walk like pop rocks, and I dig that. You talk to me, sunset colors in your voice. Oh, and the hushed sound of wings ripping through air.

Don't be confused. This isn't a love poem. I don't write those.

I just wanted you to know, that a few times a day, I write for you. In a way that's not actually writing, but in a way where I notice things (because that's what I do, I notice things) and think, I want to write that. I want to write that for you - always.

Here's what I want to say: mortal sins are sins but so are venial sins, but not in the same way.

Love is like that, too.

Love is like that, too. (but this isn't a love poem). It just isn't.

This Old House Is Falling Down Around My Ears

I'm doing the most graceful pirouettes in this dizzying time of interim. A year from now seems blurry. A week from now is blurry. But right now, it feels good to pick up the fruits and eat them, to get red faced with whiskey, to pick apart the scales of the freshwater mermaid.

Life is myth. Or some lives are myth: superstition buried in the sand of Utah, love swirling around, tap dancing with the Tropic of Cancer, destruction with a fancy paper mask.

(Destruction with a fancy paper mask.)

here come the tears (for Brett)

Sometimes even when we work really hard, shit crumbles. Don't we know that.

Sometimes, or rather, other times, we settle and shake and shift our lives down to fit perfectly in the space (and time) we have arranged around us. Those are lucky times. Good and favored and take-a-big-breath times. Those days end with sun in our hair. We rest in the easiness.

I want to say I'm sorry to you. This is not the way we all imagined it. Please forgive the universe for the unlucky.

Let your mouth sing praises, in hope.
I love you.

like the warmth from the sun

Some days are days that last forever. Some days are days that last forever in the best way. In the way that you accidentally smell like sweat because playing in the sand with a bunch of kids is something not to be taken lightly. I mean, you have to start at the feet and end with the shoulders. Covering every inch of a 10 year old with Indiana sand at a swimming hole is harder than you think.

Then, you're not even finished. You have to bulldoze sand under their little necks so they can (comfortably) watch their friends in the water. Do you even get it? Today, it wasn't about the sand. Well, maybe it was about the sand for them. But today, it wasn't about the sand for me.

Little moments, right? Isn't that what it all kind of comes down to? Little moments and reminders and sand on your scalp and giggling kids and connecting in the sameness and falling asleep on the bus ride home and counting Jolly Ranchers. And living and loving and being happy? Right?

I know I'm right. I just know it.