Month: June 2017

Collision

Today I was hit almost head on by someone heading in the opposite direction on 168. I was at the light waiting to turn and she was starting to drive after her light turned green and something in her car fell and she bent down to look for it and veered out of her lane and right into me. The car seems to be drive-able, but I haven’t had to take it far. I’m worried my AC may have been damaged, but time will tell. We stood outside for two hours waiting for the state trooper to arrive.

The lady was nice, said it was her first accident. She was an older woman. It sucks that now I have to take the car in and get it fixed when it just got out of the body shop from the accident we were in back in May. This has already been a rough summer for that car.

My mom came down in case we needed help getting home and she hung out with us for awhile. She has since left and I’m letting Angelica spend tonight and tomorrow night over at my parents’ house. I want her to get to spend extra time with them now that it is summer and my mom is on summer break.

As for me, I’ll just be relaxing tonight. I might watch a movie. I know I’m going to read before Craig calls. I’ll study the Bible. I might take a hot bath. I might write. I feel lonely without Craig or Angelica, but it will be nice to have some time to myself and I’m so glad she’s getting extra time with my parents.

Embracing the Suck

Craig is gone again. We dropped him off at the ship early this morning. He will be gone for a few weeks. I am grateful it is not longer, but a few weeks is still a long time to be without your soulmate. I laid down to take a nap when we got home from dropping him off and the bed already feels so empty.

So I have decided, as Craig puts it, to embrace the suck. How can I try to stay busy and make the most out of this deployment so that I have a full, rich life even while Craig is gone?

For one thing I am going to let the baby sleep in the bed with me and cuddle her at night, something there’s not space to do when Craig is here. I’m also going to let her spend some nights over at her grandparents house to have fun and spend extra time with them. When Craig is home I only let her spend the night there occasionally because I don’t want him to lose time with her when he gets home from work. But she should spend extra time with Grandma and Grandpa over the next few weeks.

While Angelica is with her grandparents I will try to get extra writing done. I will also try to get together with friends in the evenings. That will be nice.

I will go to book stores and restaurants in the evening by myself. I’m actually one of those rare people who likes to go to restaurants and even to movie theaters by myself. Of course I would rather go with my husband but since that isn’t an option I will utilize the time to do things on my own. And normally I don’t even go into town in the evenings because I like to be home when Craig gets home to greet him at the door with a kiss. But since there’s no one to be home for by 5 I may as well stay in town sometimes. Lonely, but I will try and shop and have fun and do things.

How else can I take this sucky time. That I would rather not go through and get something out of it? What can I do to make my marriage even stronger during this deployment? Is there anything romantic I can do? I know Craig will try to keep regular contact with me by calling an email and when he can. I can only hope that he is able to do that. I would like to set goals of being a better wife, a more well-read person, and becoming a better homemaker while he is gone. I would like Craig to have a better wife to come back to than the one he left. So I will be cleaning, reading, minimizing, writing, writing letters to my husband, spending extra time with our daughter, spending extra time with my parents, spending extra time with friends, and taking care of the home front while Craig is gone. I am going to embrace the suck.

Pharmacological Fog

Recapturing yourself will be easy.

White still in the bedroom,

structure from private, necessary snow.

dreaming of silence.

Your mind is a playground of artillery.

 

Capturing the sense of yourself will be hard,

Lost 2 feet tall in a field of chaff.

The women have needles and no yarn.

A man sits toward the curdling sun,

his face a mouth.

 

Sound your siren song

A gentle offering of wisteria wishes

and sulking letters.

Give her a sonorous rope to tie round her wrist

a little balloon bobbing desperately toward mass.

 

Engagement, Old Friends, Bunnies

I’ve been going through old photos on an old laptop and I have a bunch that I want to post. These photos are all from when Craig and I were engaged, and early in our marriage. It’s quite a walk down memory lane.

This was taken at my friend Emily’s wedding, where I was a bridesmaid. A few weeks later we had our own wedding.

Emily and I!

Out at lunch together.

Adopting Autumn

Scrapbooking! Cell phone cameras used to suck so bad.

Uncle Jerry and Craig

Jack, the best bunny ever. Loving, nondestructive, fun. He died a few weeks before the baby died of old age.

My handsome man when we were newly weds!

I’d never wear something that low cut now.

World of Coke in Atlanta!

Visiting Virginia Tech. Me standing in front of the dorm I lived in freshman year, Lee Hall.

In front of Drill Field at War Memorial.

 

Midwest

Fuzzy snowmen smell like turpentine.

Why all this wistful wind,

this heavy quiet,

these creative snowmen dancing in slow motion

to no music?

Not inaudible music,

or even illegible sound,

but nothing at all-

Machines with no factory.

This snow  covers a ghost city.

The children scattered and died.

Yes, I am freezing.

Would you like to dance?

Churches

Church of memoir,

of discovery,

of chants.

Cloistered in my name are ten lives

I did not live

in favor of a sublime 11th.

What is better than best?

What can joy can be discarded for ecstasy?

The taste of salt lines my mouth

when I look back.

 

 

translated to Xhosa, Afrikaans, and back

Church of Love

 

I find joy

while I lay cloistered in my ten lives.

Auroras swirl beyond my reach.

They will not live.

There is a reason I am so inordinately fond of 11.

What is better than a lot?

 

Why have I ignored peace?

 

It tasted of salt in my mouth.

Power lines guiding me back home.

 

 

Church of Love

Separate the gaiety from the joy.

Lonely in my ten lives,

they live,

it is as though they live without me.

How do I dispose of gaiety?

Of me?

Comparison

Bride of comparison,

you have found me

living through lacy love letters

to the glowing voice of the world.

I have loved and lived

and lavished

like a euphoric angel,

all over the world.

See how North America quakes beneath my hands?

Hear the tender whispers of my name from Europe.

I am tired of molds and braces and boxes.

What They have is not better than what I have.

Always They come with a capital T and claws.

They possess than,

But I hold hands with then,

and waltz over the sea.

3 Poems in a Minor Key

An envelope locked out of sight,

buttercups giggling in the fields –

and then a pink fog rolls over the view.

It is all so dreamy.

Don’t bring a mirror here.

 

Gloomy, graceful ghosts

lounge under the beach umbrella.

They are nudists.

They are like frosted glass.

No sunburns will befall them

as they get drunk

and carouse on the beach where they

washed ashore.

 

Welcome to the Life Center

With sparkly resources to help you warm winter.

Are you a cartwheel?

A suspicious glance?

A still wind?

We can help you get back to work.

We offer many courses:

Earth Spinning

Bone Knitting

Light Painting –

and certifications in

Prebirth Fantasy,

Pain Sculpture

Freeway Fashion.

Visit us today in the building of roses,

at the corner of Air and Fire.