catinsunshine

There is nowhere to go anymore-- Nowhere to go and sit and think. Nowhere to stumble onto nothing A nothing free of social stink. I should like such an empty place, A place I cannot even name, Where even blue jays whisper And paths are all the same. You would come with me, darling. Of course, you're to follow close What use have I for silence Without the words I love the most?

 It's such a uniquely private moment when a wife must confront the impending loss of her husband's leg. This was one of many lessons the young doctor had yet to learn. He lingered in the room longer than was entirely necessary and offered a cheerful prognosis and optimistic predictions that were only barely heard. When he finally excused himself, the door swung shot with the metallic click of newly loaded ammunition. Emilie flinched at the noise, but Jim's attention remained wholly fixated on his chest, where a striped, maroon tie lay innocuously. He was tired of the silence and the distance. He wanted to hear her voice say something. "This

The woman I was supposed to be Sits behind a desk at the local radio station, Thankful for the job her mother gave her, Which saved her (At least for now) From the endless pits That high school graduates fall into. She pushes and excels. But of course she does. She could have done anything. The woman I was supposed to be Comes home at night to the husband She never had a choice about And the kids she never wanted a choice about. Watching her flit around the nursery You would never know this had been Thrust upon her at the too-young age of nineteen. She loves and cares almost too intensely. But of course she does. This fam

When the war was over in Dayton, Ohio, I imagine folks reacted pretty much the same way they reacted all over. Wasn't nothing you could hear but the rifles of men chasing joy instead of death for the first time in too long. Churches rang bells, but the rifles rang louder. Guess that's how it always is. I sat by our old radio, sobbing and hiccupping, trying to tell the babies I was happy because now the soldiers were finally coming home and the people could stop dying. Suppose it's a little sad, though, how quick something like that can turn you into brittle on the inside. Wasn't more than a day or two later that I foun

They spelled her name in the French style as a sort of apology for her haphazard home birth in the middle of an Arkansas farm and for the fancy silverware they would never have. The old country doctor sat crouched on the wooden stairs that had been in disrepair since before the war. One tired look at the mother was enough to determine everything he needed to know. The Sunday morning breeze extinguished the match again and again until finally it danced long enough to elicit a fine, grizzled smoke from his second best pipe. Her husband, looking embarrassed and unsure, relieved the rack of his preaching jacket. He mumbled an exc

My own memory is more practical than I ever learned how to be. It realized that down the road I would no longer have vast, cavernous storehouses with which to preserve every detail of every event in my life. Slowly and surely, it began to shred the details. Sometimes, this saddens me. For instance, longer after I have forgotten the color of my father's eyes or the way his laugh echoed in our house or how I marveled at his unending and extraordinary mind, I will remember this: Always keep a year's salary saved in the bank. God damn, if that isn't useful information. Until the day I die, I will strive and strive and strive to

It's really sort of funny that new Is right there in the title. Quaint, almost, how it's clearly Anything but. Its skin, creased, wrinkled, Beautiful in a way that I have all but forgotten, Is lovely like my grandmother's slender hand (and her heart too, I suppose). Just so damn graceful. How much I must think of myself, To believe I could fix it With purple duct tape Or purple glue sticks Or a brain that is gray and new, To believe I could add a single thing To ancient pages Where a man is nailed to a tree For telling people to love one another, For telling people that we are deeply loved, For telling people that maybe

Fog soaked foothills provide a backdrop To many lives, forgotten, but lived nonetheless. Today, the building, the home (made of scavenged stones and cracking tar) slumps in defeat, Wishing it could have done more. Like every tragic tale ever told, Mother dies in childbirth, Father grows distant and hard. Daughter has her mother's eyes And her sense of perpetual captivity.