*I wrote this piece March 19, 2006. It appeared on my first blog, Sprigs, which most of you have never heard of.

(I’m a little silly on soy milk, so I’m throwing caution to the wind and posting this without reviewing it for typos and whatnot. Yeah, that’s right: This is how I roll when I’m silly on soy milk. Just when you thought you had me all figured out. Now watch: Dave will swing by and point out all my typos and whatnot.)
* * *

It’s 1998. Valentine’s Day. When I wake up, LoveShack is full of energy, which is unusual for him. He’s never been a morning person. He tells me he’s got something special planned for me, instructs me to get dressed.

We’ve been dating for almost three years, so my mind begins to put the pieces together to form a very specific picture: The chipper mood. The special plans. The cheesy holiday. I’m convinced he’s going to ask me to marry him. We’ve been talking about it for quite some time but haven’t made any real plans, and there’s been no proposal.

LoveShack asks me what I’m going to wear. It should be something comfortable, he says. Don’t wear a dress. Maybe that cute brown skirt and a top.

Although LoveShack often compliments me on the clothes I wear, he rarely micromanages my dressing process. This could mean only one thing: He’s going to ask me to marry him by one of my favorite trees, the one that’s about a mile in on a hiking trail just east of Kansas City. I need to wear something cute, so when I recall the moment he asked me to be his wife, I don’t have to envision myself in ratty old painting pants, a T-shirt and my hiking boots, my usual hiking get-up.

How considerate of him, I think. To be thinking ahead like that, making sure I have an attractive visual of this day to store away in my memory. And how wonderful for him to tell me I should wear something comfortable, something I can move in, since a long hike down a dirt trail is required to reach the destination that will witness our commitment to being together for the rest of our lives.

I spring to life, now in an even better mood than LoveShack. As I push my arms through the sleeves of a white knit top, I try to pretend like I don’t know what he’s got up his sleeve. I tell myself to quit smiling. If I smile too much, he’ll know I know what’s up. My mouth keeps working its way into a smile, in spite of my silent directive that it not do so.

I locate the brown skirt, the one LoveShack asked me to wear. Then I find some thong sandals. They won’t be the best for hiking, but they go with the outfit, and they’ll do just fine. I pull my hair back, apply a little make-up, something I wouldn’t usually do for a hike, but today isn’t just any hike. It’s the first hike of the rest of my life, the one where he’ll get down on one knee, the branches of the tree will make the sun dance in patterns on his face, he will produce a ring from the pocket of his coat, smoothly, as if he’s practiced this motion thousands of times, as if his life depends on its effortless removal.

I will cry immediately, my mascara running in feathered lines down my cheeks, my tears making criss-crossed paths as they go and sweeping my blush along with them in the process. I will fall on top of LoveShack, straddling and clinging to him, my face in his neck, my tears on his skin, and he will know from this reaction that, of course, my answer is yes. Although I won’t actually say it, caught up as I am in the enormity of his gesture. The hike, the tree, the absolute most-perfect way to ask for my hand in marriage.

Once I’m ready to go, LoveShack tells me there’s just one thing left: He needs to blindfold me. He has a handkerchief in his hand for this purpose, which he ties around my face. Then he leads me out the door of the house, carefully guiding me down the stairs. I love that I trust him this much, knowing I won’t misstep in his care. And if I do, he’ll be there to right me.

We pull out of the driveway and, before I know it, he tells me we’ve arrived at our destination. By my calculations, we’re about 45 minutes away from the head of the hiking trail. I rework my image of what’s about to happen. Perhaps he decided to take me to a park in town, but even if that were the case, the drive should have been a little longer.

Before allowing me to remove the blindfold, LoveShack plays up the moment.

Honey, you said you wanted a ring, he says. So I’m getting you a ring.

A bright, metallic feeling moves through me. This must mean he’s taken me to the antique jewelry store in our neighborhood so I can pick out one of the old-fashioned wedding rings I love so much. How wonderful to include me in the selection of the ring.

You can take off your blindfold now, he instructs.

I do. And I see that we aren’t at the antique jewelry store after all. We are parked in front of a strip mall that contains a liquor store, a used vacuum cleaner store, and a tattoo shop. I ask what we’re doing there.

I wanted to get you a ring for Valentine’s Day. A belly-button ring. Remember how you used to want one of those?

I look up at the sign for the tattoo shop and realize they also do body piercings. I start bawling, but not the kind of tears I thought I’d be shedding on this day. Then I start screaming.

I can’t believe you did this to me on Valentine’s Day! You can’t just date a girl for three years, then blindfold her and tell her you have something special planned without her thinking you’re going to propose!

LoveShack, still not realizing the enormity of his blunder, laughs and replies, I said I was going to get you a ring, didn’t I?

I cry more and yell louder, Yes! And when you just said that, I thought you meant a real ring, a wedding ring! Not a belly-button ring!

I am inconsolable. I refuse to look at the thing in the seat next to me. The hurtful, cruel thing that has been in my life for three years. The thing that should have known me better than to treat me like that. (Should have known not to treat any woman like that.) That’s when I realize he is not the kind of man who will get down on his knee in front of one of my favorite trees to propose, let alone dream up such a plan in the first place.

Still, as I demand he take me home and swat away his attempts to reach out from his bucket seat and hug me in mine — as if he is a swarm of mosquitoes whose every bite is lethal — I know he’ll manage to right even this situation, to thrill and delight me with so many loving gestures during our lives together that sometime, long after we’ve gotten married, this day will become nothing but a funny story, one that will make me love him even more with every telling. (Or maybe not.)

*I wrote this piece June 19, 2006. It appeared on my first blog, Sprigs, which most of you have never heard of.
* * *

10:47 a.m.
I wake up.

10:48 a.m.
I brush my teeth.

10:51 a.m.
I strip the bed with LoveShack and get laundry ready for the wash.

11:02 a.m.
I try to write a post about the time my mother slit her throat in the shower but was found by my sister in time for her life to be saved. I decide today is not the day to write about that and end up writing a poem about the color white instead. Apparently, I have some anger issues about the color white. Who knew?

11:20 a.m.
I show the first draft of my poem to LoveShack, who nixes a couple of lines.

11:22 a.m.
I put the first draft of my poem away and decide to write a post about everything I do today, which is inspired by Paper Napkin. She has a recurring post, “This Day in My Life,” and she asks others to join in. I am not doing this on the right day or anything, but somehow this seems like the day to do it.

11:24 a.m.
I carry my journal to the kitchen and set the table for breakfast. LoveShack and I eat vegetarian sausage, waffles, hash browns and fresh fruit. LoveShack asks me if I think cherries are really miniature apples. I say no. He asks if I think mango tastes like a cross between a carrot and an apple. I say no. He asks if I think pineapple tastes like it has a hint of coconut in it. I say no. He asks me why I am writing down everything he says. I don’t answer.

He begins singing the words “Monkeys in uniform.” I ask why. He refuses to tell me because he knows I will write it down. He continues singing. I badger him about what he’s singing. He finally tells me it’s a modification of the Iron Maiden song, “Women in Uniform.” I write that down. He tells me not to. I explain that I am keeping track of everything for my post today. He says he doesn’t want me quoting him. I tell him it’s my way of showing interest in him. He laughs and laughs and laughs. I leave the room.

12:05 p.m.
I brush my teeth and do other stuff you probably don’t want me going into detail about.

12:11 p.m.
I do a crazy-silly naked run around house after taking off my pajamas and before getting dressed. Every time I change clothes, I run around the house naked like this. It makes me feel free and happy.

12:15 p.m.
I wake up Digi the mouse and give him his eye drops.

12:37 p.m.
We leave the house to go on a long walk in a state park. I take my tapeless handheld recording device so I can document what we do while we are out.

12:52 p.m.
We begin walking on a trail that leads to Lake Washington. When we get to the edge of the lake, I hear a familiar sound, the rhythmic sound of creaking wood. I see that a dead tree has fallen into the water and is creaking with every wave that hits it. The sound draws me in, as if it’s trying to tell me something. I seem to recall a similar sound from my childhood, one I heard on the marina at Lake Texoma. Did the wooden planks make this sound as they moved with the surface of the water? Did the ropes that kept the boats in their slips make this sound as they flexed and relaxed? I am suddenly filled with the urge to be there, on that lake, to be a child again hearing what I heard and seeing what I saw there. To know every detail that escapes me now or that is covered over by a haze of passing years.

Farther down the path, we pass a hollow in a tree trunk so big at least three adults could fit inside it. I go inside, watch what I can see of the world through a large opening in the trunk. LoveShack comes looking for me. I call his name, watch him look back and forth before he realizes I’m inside the tree.

We pass a baby bird near the edge of the trail. It is dead, its skin thin and still moist, pulled taught over large, dark, marble-like eyes and over bones that press against it from inside. The bird is not unlike a fresh Thai spring roll, its contents wrapped up but still visible. A dark slug eats at the bird’s stomach. I’m certain that, once it’s had its fill, the slug will make its way into the path, where someone will step on it. Both the slug’s and the baby bird’s lives seem tragic to me.

2:28 p.m.
We return to the car and drive to Best Buy so LoveShack can pick up something he needs. I sleep in the car while he shops, dream about something that I forget as soon as LoveShack’s return to the car wakes me up. I decide I’m hungry and find some old tortilla chips in the glove compartment. I eat them. They aren’t too bad, considering they’ve been in there a few months.

3:18 p.m.
We arrive at 24 Hour Fitness. We work out. I hurt my back.

4:10 p.m.
We leave the gym and drive to Trader Joe’s. We park near a bus stop, and I see a woman who, from behind, looks almost exactly like my mother. She’s waiting for a bus. I watch her until the bus arrives and she steps onto it.

4:50 p.m.
I nap in the car on the way home from the store.

5:17 p.m.
We arrive at home. I run up the stairs and jump in bed for a nap. I plan to sleep no more than an hour.

7:03 p.m.
I wake up from my nap, watch sky through window. I think about how loud my tinnitus is and how uncanny the resemblance was between the woman getting on the bus and my mother, at least from behind. (A large unstructured shoulder bag she carried by the strap in her right hand so it swayed just above the ground as she walked. Unflattering, bold-colored clothes that draped from her large, pale, apple-shaped body. Short, dark and perfectly styled hair that was out of sync with everything else about her. These elements may not seem unique but, taken together, along with the way she moved, they added up to someone who looked like my mother in every way, and that’s not something I run across very often. It’s only happened twice, including today, and both times have been since her death.)

I listen to someone try over and over again to start a weed eater. It finally starts.

7:15 p.m.
I wander downstairs to find something to eat. I look out the kitchen window and see LoveShack in the yard doing yard work. I realize he’s the one I heard trying to start the weed eater. I realize my afternoon has been much lazier than his.

7:26 p.m.
I sit down at my computer and read some e-mail while eating a pasta dish and a few olives. I continue writing this post.

7:35 p.m.
I choke on one of the olives, wander back downstairs for some water and end up heading for the sofa, where I suspect I will again fall asleep. I make a last-minute decision not to laze away my time doing nothing on the sofa but to instead grab some juice, some soy nuts and a book of poetry and head out to the deck to read. I invite LoveShack, who’s come in from doing yard work and is now in the shower, to join me when he’s finished cleaning up.

7:45 p.m.
LoveShack joins me on the deck and begins reading aloud select passages from a brochure he picked up about the state park we visited today. “A place for serenity,” he reads. “I didn’t realize serenity was location-specific,” I reply.

7:53 p.m.
I have to bring the container of soy nuts inside because I can’t stop eating them. I set them on the kitchen counter, grab one last handful of nuts, then grab my Shrinky Dink kit and return to the deck. LoveShack is still reading the brochure about the state park.

8:33 p.m.
I bake the Shrinky Dinks I made, do dishes and begin cleaning up the house. I eat another handful of soy nuts.

9:35 p.m.
I wake up Digi the mouse to give him his eye drops and steroid treatment. I am happy to find both his eyes are open.

9:45 p.m.
I write a letter to my friend in Kansas City who has Alzheimer’s disease.

10:02 p.m.
I write a note to my father-in-law for Father’s Day. I think about my own father, but not in any specific way because he died so long ago, I don’t remember that much about him. He is more dream to me than reality, covered over in a haze of passing years like a dream whose details are fuzzy.

10:15 p.m.
I begin writing another poem. I finish up this post.

11:21 p.m.
I proofread this post.

12:08 a.m.
I post this post.

* * *
Note

One of my goals this weekend was to sleep. I haven’t been getting enough sleep lately. That explains the waking up extremely late and all the napping. I just don’t want you all thinking I sleep like this all the time.

What’s injected into one person is injected into us all.

This is my American Sentence for Troy Davis. Rethabile has asked that we write American Sentences today as a way of protesting Davis’ execution. Poetry most likely will not change what will happen to Troy, but it does allow us to keep from being silent about what’s going to happen to Troy. And, by extension, to us all.

We must always take sides. Neutrality helps the oppressor, never the victim. Silence encourages the tormentor, never the tormented. — Elie Wiesel

I have counted myself among the silent more often than I care to admit. — Dana Guthrie Martin

This post started as a comment on Nathan’s blog, where a ridiculously awesome conversation sprung up in his comments section for this post. Check it out. I’ve excerpted my latest contribution to the discussion below.
* * *

“This is one of the things i most love about poetry … how language can be used to change perceptions, to rewire … ”

Jo, Nathan and I were just talking about this the other day. How we now know so many things are capable of changing the brain. Exercise, for example, literally promotes neurogenesis, the creation of new brain matter. And that’s not a fringe scientific finding.* It’s being studied and reported on all over the place, including the Centers for Disease Control. Perhaps most notably, this phenomenon of a changing brain can be seen in people who suffer strokes and who have certain types of reversible dementia. The brain can and does rewire, rebuild itself.

But the brain isn’t relegated to re-growing into its previous shape, simply hooking up old connections as if it were an operator at a busy switchboard. The brain can make never-before-established connections, grow into new ways of experiencing and understanding the world and into new ways of relating to the body and processing signals from and for the body. This is where things like meditative practice can come in. This is where things like poetry come in.

We spend so much time running our brains along the same ruts — the same fears, concerns, worries, preoccupations — in short, the same (often dysfunctional) thought patterns. To break out of that, we need our minds to be broken into, in a sense — both as readers and as writers.

As a poet, when I write I do feel something from outside, something I will loosely and erroneously call “other,” is taking up residence in me and helping me to see things from a different, often unexpected and inexplicable, perspective. This in turn helps me to experience the world in a different way. I am rewiring my brain. I do this often enough, and my thoughts start to change. My perceptions change. I get out of those ruts and possess — for lack of a better word — a different consciousness. I become other.

And that’s what empathy is, is it not? To start by embracing and experiencing self, then to move beyond self to understand and embrace, accept, other. Then to realize other is not other at all, and self is not self at all. There is no differentiation. There is none.

This shift in consciousness which I experience when writing also happens for me when I read poetry. This is why I feel poets are doing themselves a great disservice when we don’t read other poets’ work. We are losing half the transformative experience, if not more. I would argue we are losing more, actually, and that it takes a lot of transformative reading experiences to result in one transformative writing experience.

Sometimes people balk at me when I say poetry can change the world. They are wrong. If poetry can change me, or you, or anyone who read and writes it, then it can change the world. Because that’s where changes in the world begin: in each one of us. Change is like a brush fire. So small you don’t notice it at first. Then heat. Then a glow. Then, before you know it, the flames are everywhere and everything that moves is hauling ass to get the hell out of the way.

Besides, if any one of us is changed by poetry, we all are in a sense. The world has already been changed by poetry. We have already been changed by it.

* * *
Note

*This is not to knock fringe scientific findings which, in my opinion, are some of the best scientific findings.

How you allow men inside: through breath that parts your lips, is taken up in your lungs. They say your name and it threads through you like a weed vine. Their diamond stylus needles fall into your ruts, take up residence there, scrape gently along your ridges. Men pull from you what is within you and translate it as sound. You keep skipping, like a record. You keep skipping. You hold their names in your mouth, roll them around like rocks. When you speak, you return to them what they have breathed into you. When you speak, there is no sound, only motion.

* I wrote this piece Nov. 27, 2005. It appeared on my first blog, Sprigs, which most of you have never heard of.
* * *

I am lying on my stomach, my bare body covered only by a white sheet. The thread count is high, so the sheet feels like silk when it brushes against my back and ass. Music is playing softly in the background, something slow featuring wooden flutes.

I hear the doorknob turn, then Natasha steps into the room. The lights are off, the room lit only by three scented candles. Natasha is young, mid- to late 20s. She is thin with delicate features and long, brown hair that she’s pulled back. She giggles as she carries a bottle of warm oil across the room to where I am lying.

Natasha gently lifts the sheet, uncovering my left leg. She works the oil, which is mixed with sea salt, into my skin. With all the force her small hands and slender arms are capable of, she begins kneading my thigh and calf.

That’s right. I am getting a massage and exfoliation. I’m at a fancy spa in Victoria, British Columbia.

I don’t care that I don’t know Natasha, that we will probably never see one another again. I don’t care that I had to pay her to touch me like this. All I know is, this massage — which I thought would be relaxing — is actually quite hot. I haven’t been naked with a woman in a long time. (Sure, I am the only one who’s naked, but I’ll take what I can get.)

Plus, I know I am going to leave this spa without any trace of dead skin cells on my body. Natasha will see to that.

Just when I think the massage has gotten as good as it’s going to get, Natasha, who has asked me to reposition myself on my back, asks in her soft, high-pitched voice, Would you like me to do your chest?

I play it cool. Um … suuuure. She slowly removes the sheet from my chest. Standing behind my head, she leans over me, arms outstretched, her own chest practically touching my face. I try not to make any strange faces at the feeling of her hands working the oil and salt into my breasts.

When her pinkies sweep my sides, it tickles a little. I start to smile, only partly because she’s tickling me. I say, Sorry, I’m a little ticklish. She responds, Oh, I’m ticklish, too. She giggles. I giggle. Would you like me to stop, she asks. Oh … noooo, I respond.

When it’s all over, I leave her an enormous tip.

That was in August, the last time I visited Victoria. This past weekend, when LoveShack and I were visiting again, I made an appointment for the exact same spa service at the exact same spa. Yet things didn’t go down in exactly the same way.

It started out promising. Different room, different masseuse. But I am naked, and there’s oil and salt involved. All in all, things are looking pretty good. I notice at the outset, however, that there’s no music. And the candles aren’t lit. But I can look past those details. Any moment, the masseuse is going to enter the room. She’ll have an exotic name, and I will be minutes away from being felt up.

The masseuse, whose name I forget, gets things off on the right foot when she says, I’m just going to ask you to part your legs a little for me. Oh yeah, I am thinking, This is going to be good. But it immediately becomes apparent she doesn’t have the same touch as Natasha.

Natasha combined extreme pressure with intense abrasion. With her, I felt like a naughty girl who needed to have my naughtiness scrubbed right off of me. I thought I was going to have to scream STOP before she removed all the skin from my limbs, not just the dead skin.

Not so with this gal. She wasn’t digging into me with everything she had. And there was absolutely no giggling. Then, right before the part where she would reach second base, the worst thing of all happened: She quit.

We’re done now, she announced almost brusquely.

What? But what about the girls, I wanted to ask her, but I didn’t think it would be appropriate.

How could she be done with the massage without any titty-touchy? She didn’t even do my stomach. What the FUCK just happened here, I asked myself after she left the room.

She told me to take my time before coming out to shower off. So I laid there and did for myself what I’d paid her to do. I rubbed the salt and oil mixture into my own breasts and stomach. But it wasn’t the same. I feel myself up all the time.

As I took matters into my own hands, I wondered if the boob rub was an optional part of this service. Or had Natasha offered me a little something extra, if you know what I mean. Had Natasha given me the female equivalent of a ball rub? Images from that massage flashed before me. The candles, the music, the giggling, her chest in my face.

Had Natasha played me for a bigger tip? Or was this masseuse just shirking her responsibilities?

I would never know, because I couldn’t figure out a way to ask the spa’s managers without seeming like a perv. And I didn’t want to get Natasha in trouble if she was working the system. I might want to go back sometime and ask for her by name, after all.

by Stacey Howell and Dana Guthrie Martin

between my legs, you work
your moistening mimicry

so I cry at the rhythm
persuaded out of me.

break through resistance
to water-based intimacy.

clear and viscous: do not
abide by those who deny

entry to fingers, to silicone.
without you, we are free

to smell and taste desire
but not to ride the sweet

pulse of another, the fine
caudled intermingling

of bodies pumping toward
a flourish. certain finality

of moaning contractions
flanks muscles and lubricity.

somewhere between echo
and stutter comes release

as one of your loosed droplets
glides down the side of your bottle.

* * *
Process Notes

(We wrote this piece over at The Poetry Collaborative. There’s a pretty entertaining discussion in the post where we wrote our draft. Check it out here.)

*I wrote this piece Jan. 20, 2006. It appeared on my first blog, Sprigs, which most of you have never heard of.
* * *

As a child, I had a strong desire to control myself and my environment, and that desire extended well beyond the areas in which I could exercise any degree of control.

This is how it came to pass that I peed on my paternal grandmother.

It happened when I was about five or six years old. She was on vacation with us at Lake Texoma, where my father loved to go fishing. For some reason, my grandmother had agreed to make the drive down to the southern border of Oklahoma with my parents and me. My grandfather may have tagged along as well, but that doesn’t matter. This story involves only me, my grandmother and my control issues.

I was in the bathroom peeing when I suddenly became aware of how well I could seemingly control my stream of urine. Off, on. On, off. I was able, with just a few flexes of the right muscles, to start and stop the flow with precision. In the excitement of the moment, I was convinced I could make just one drop of pee appear before stopping the stream.

Further, I somehow imagined the single drop would remain suspended in the air, as if my mind could control it once it left my body. As if through thought alone I could make that drop hang there as long as I wished to have it hang there — so everyone could see my achievement of producing only one drop of pee.

In my delusion, I rose from the toilet and ran, naked, into the bedroom next to the bathroom, where my grandmother sat on a twin-sized bed.

Grandma, Grandma, look at my pee, I said.

No, honey, I don’t need to see your pee, she replied.

I insisted, No, look. I just want to show you something.

Why don’t you go put your clothes on, she said.

Though phrased as a suggestion, it was clearly more of an order. An order given by an old woman becoming increasingly uncomfortable with the situation in which she currently found herself.

I was always a stubborn child. I knew I’d discovered something special, the ability to pee and then not pee at will. To overcome my body’s instincts and desires through focused application of muscular force. I wanted to share this discovery with her. She would see. Once I showed her, she would see how special this ability of mine was. And, in turn, how special I was.

So I peed.

I stood in the bedroom and peed all over the brown shag carpet, all over my grandmother’s feet. I was mortified. Couldn’t figure out why I hadn’t been able to control it in front of her. She gave me a look that said any hint of love for me which had ever flittered through her cold heart was, at that moment, snuffed out forever.

I ran, naked, from the bedroom, back to the bathroom from whence I’d come. I again sat on the toilet, this time rocking back and forth. What have I done, what have I done, I asked myself in rhythm with my rocking.

To her credit, my grandmother never told my parents about the incident. She didn’t have to. I’d already learned my lessons: First, pee has a mind of its own and can’t be controlled, especially not by a mere child. Second, don’t ever pee on someone whose love for you is bounded, else you are bound to lose their love entirely as soon as the warm rush hits their bare feet.

At least I believe I have. It was a writing prompt given by Slynne over at The Poetry Collaborative. I do whatever Slynne tells me to, since she obviously knows what she’s doing as a poet. (And since she let me write an ode to lube with her.)

So here it is. I used lines from one of my poems and interwove them with lines from one of Nathan’s poems.

It surprised me how well the two poems seemed to fit together. The experience was not unlike the last scene of Emmet Otter’s Jug Band Christmas, where Emmet and his friends start playing a tune they’ve composed when Emmet’s mother spontaneously joins in with an old song that Emmet’s father used to love. The tune and the lyrics add up to something more, something both unexpected and … well … complete.*
* * *

You Won’t Dare Speak

What you want before he goes:
His breath hissing over you,

the door with a sigh that
will not quiet, a thrum

with steady pulse. Ready at
his pale torso, his swayback

untouched. Stepping lightly,
you will block his mouth

as you cross the room.
Delicate carpet. The crystal.

What has awakened in you
says more than a novel.

You will pound your fists.
You will dive in to grab his arms.

The nod, the stare, the hand,
all his wanting. His hair.

A language you can’t follow.
A crescendo, an instrument

shaking body into service.
His voice in your body

sits ringing with leaky keys.
In illuminated glances,

footprints bloom in
the secretive display.

Your heart is still beating.
The always of water.

What loosens.
Press now. Now.

* * *
*Here are the lyrics to that tune from Emmet Otter’s Jug Band Christmas. I cry whenever I hear it:

In Our World

We’re closer now than ever before
There’s love in our world and we’re showing it more
Our world says, “Welcome, stranger.”
Everybody’s a friend
Favorite stories don’t end
In our world

Some say our world is getting too small
I say, with kindness, there’s room for us all
Our world is always changing
Everyday’s a surprise
Love can open your eyes
In our world

When night lays sad upon you
Go watch a simple sunrise
Love can open your eyes
In our world
* * *

(And I recommend you watch another choice performance from that movie, “Riverbottom Nighmare Band.” You can see it here.)

Getting ready for Korea. Note the RefrigArranger on the table, one of their wedding presents.

Sometimes I pick at myself, at the way I look. Then I stop and think: How could I ever want to look like anyone other than the product of these two?

I can’t imagine two more beautiful people, and I am not just saying that because they are my parents. I truly do believe they are the most handsome couple to have ever set foot on this earth. And how I miss them. How I ache for them every day, every day. Despite everything.

All those long, slender fingers. And her nose even slants to the side like mine.

The job my father did until he died. Seen here doing his best Clark Kent impression.

Father in Korea, smiling.

My ears do not stick out like this, although this photo does explain why my nose is so long. I like that my father looks a little like Joshua Homme in this one.

Happy. Need I say more?

Several of the photos below of my mother were taken at Lake Texoma. This is where I grew up and grew into myself, even though our real residence was in a town two hours north and Texoma was just our weekend home. When my father died, we lost the lake, too. My mother couldn’t bear to go back there for years.

How can a man-made body of water hold a family’s identity? I can barely look at these photos of my mother there without crying. Which is to say, I can’t look at them at all without crying.

My mother doing her best Sylvia Plath impersonation.

The lake, the lake, the lake.

Yes, I inherited this body. Commence with the drooling. I even have her feet.

Notice the nails. She always paid attention to the details.

This is how she is to me now: a dream, an apparition.

I like my mother in this photo. I imagine her inhabiting this space: the big Oklahoma sky, wind pushing her white dress into her body, and her looking out, and out.