Longing #32

I want to live a life where I'm so overcome by love that I forget to do the laundry.

But I want clean laundry too.

When Small Things Loom

after Bruce Bromley

(The day was as hot as the room was small. The woman had taken to stealing: a hair tie a house guest had left; a gaze into the window-glass; spare images; titles. There certainly were small things on the earth, she knew that, even sitting on such a big chair beneath such a big sun. There were the ants her daughter poked with a stick; there was the stick itself; there was her daughter. But the heat was hard that Friday, so hard it wasn't heat anymore. She thought of her old friend who lived with a stop-watch and then, quite suddenly, remembered the sundial her father had given her when she was a girl, how it melted one July, how she'd never be able to pass it down.)

Supplies

After the tornado, my father-in-law revised his list of emergency supplies. Bottled water, check books, flashlights: all those remain. But now, in addition: a shovel, in case you have to dig yourself out; a whistle, because phones are useless; dust masks, leather gloves, bicycle helmets, a weather radio for when the cable goes, a Sharpie.

A Sharpie? I asked.

To label yourself, he said. And your kids. Just in case anybody gets lost.

A Quarter

for your peace of mind

Next Stop: Here

Being on a train always gives me the most peculiar sensation of having arrived. There's something about the tracks and the movement and the sky, the little bit of shore, the off-kilter conversations, the men in hats who come by punching holes into tickets, that makes me think: this is where I've always been meant to be.

Except, of course, I'm nowhere. I'm just in-between places.

This morning, between Boston and New York, I read this book, and I was so floored by it, I made the lady next to me--the one in the blue windbreaker and the Keds--read it too. And she did. Cover-to-cover. And I was really glad we didn't speak after, only gave each other a sort of nod, and then right before we pulled into the last station--as if this is how we most accurately speak to a stranger--she took my empty fruit cup and threw it away for me.

The Vineyard

Nearly Summer

Let the beauty we love be what we do
There are a hundred ways
To kneel and kiss the ground

--Rumi