the latest posts tagged ‘cancer’
stumbling into graceland
My walk-in closet looks like an IED exploded in it: two fat piles of jeans and slacks, another of shirts and sweaters, scattered shoes I’m tripping on. There’s a rats’ nest of hangers out in the hall. I am ruthlessly culling the old or sick or awful; I have vowed to show no mercy;…
in the dying light
The finches are back. A flitting, chattering flock of tiny green birds appears in the elm outside my office windows at the ragged edge of every summer and stays as long as the camouflage works. As the ground cools and the leaves fade from Pippin Apple Green to Dirty Yellow Ready-To-Drop, there are…
a couple trips around the sun
SUMMER 2011 The stoplight at the bottom of the offramp was dead, as were the next two, at the grocery store and the high school. Not flashing red but three blank black eyes. Cars did the stop-and-go, politely taking turns. Record heat and humidity was roasting September. Air-conditioners had sucked all the juice out…
dear craig: an elephant’s tale
Dear Craig: Tom and I were watching the news on TV the other night. A cemetery somewhere had been opening old graves and moving bones to a communal pit so they could resell the plots. A woman whose grandfather’s grassy space now held Someone Who Is Not Grandpa was furious, screaming and crying….
just a song before i go
Well, I looked into the sky for my anthem And the words and the music came through But words and music will never touch the beauty that I’ve seen Looking into you, and that’s true Last verse of “Looking Into You” Music and lyrics by Jackson Browne, 1972
hey, i know! let’s build a fort!
I place the 14th item on the express checkstand conveyor and wait for the queue to move before pushing my cart any farther. My iPhone chirps, making me flinch and my skin go cold, but it’s just Stacie with a new time for yoga tomorrow, so I text back “7:30, see you then.” The…