Rosé before noon?
Puppies, plans, lunches with friends?
Oh! Vanderpump Rules!
Rosé before noon?
Puppies, plans, lunches with friends?
Oh! Vanderpump Rules!
Hot wind. Now I’m home.
Watermelon rose tea too.
Southern wife, sweet life.
Coffee, pen, journal
I told the page a secret
Blotting out the sin
The moment he calls
I want to be by his side
Like how a leash works…
Replying to the last of my clients and closing Outlook, I lament the ticket to D.C. that will go unused tonight. I fight back a tightness in my throat that I’ve come to understand needs two fingers of whiskey to solve at the end of the day. No one did this to me.
I always said you’re not ready to start your own company until you can’t remain at any other company.
Truthfully, I let myself steal from myself. I stole my future from myself. Procrastinating to avoid managing emotions about living. The reward of putting things off…that feeling becoming an addiction in itself. A dream adjacent my true dream.
My vision for this company is like rain. Cleaning out self-pity and distractions that tug at my memory, emotional reserves, concentration, and—
“¿Qué cenamos?”
“Dejame…”
He scurries away like I’ve just raised my hand to slap him. Maybe he’ll ask his father and be scared enough to actually leave me alone. I love my kids. I love my kids. I love them. But I can’t love my clients, kids, boss, husband, churchgoers, everyone! Can I?
I pour the whiskey and set my out of office email with no return date.
We can try hiking until we find exactly where the sunrise will look best. But we will end up cold and standing on a tilting rock to get an almost perfect view.
Maybe if we hop in an air balloon—but then that would lead to us freezing away while we chase a pretty skyline.
If love is a hotel…
And my love is on the top floor…
What gets me in the door?
To the front desk?
On the elevator?
With a key to the top floor? (Of course that floor is locked and guarded by fearsome goons.)
To the same room on the top floor?
And into his arms to save his life?
With clanging whirlwinds
Still meditating—no breath—
My own voice unheard
Writer who does not:
Separate island, stale wind
No thought, words, sound, life…
I stir the cream into my coffee. The sky is lit with the moon and it keeps me awake enough to race with my thoughts. “Compatible,” I think. I keep getting hit with this word when I least want to hear it. When I make a play for permanence, the other party starts their doubts. “Is it me or her timing?” “Is she consistent?” “Is she looking at me right now?” I don’t want to make them uncomfortable, but I do. And then they hit me with it. “Do you think we’re compatible?” And the next move is crucial. Because once they ask, there is only one correct answer.
Knock, hinges, then light
Gentle, cold touch as bill mounts
“like to go home please…”
I knew you were true so I boiled inside just looking at you.
Content believing anything outside an adulterer was a solid significant other.
Though, while you were here, I was so so sad, finding myself trailing the house like a sleepwalking phantom. Too exhausted to remember not to be found where I ought not. You married a ghost–a ghost that is so fitting for your temperament.
An eclipse of my whole self.
The listlessness an appropriate darker side.
Where you vowed to stay forever and guard it.
A flag on a shifting side of my moon, determined to be in shadow. While the war on earth began.
The trumpet marking the start of carnage was all of humanity showering my sunlight with arrows. A few billion lanses.
—-
I tilted my head forward a few inches to feel heat cloak my face and steam roll down to my collarbones. I inhaled the fiery gas and it burned through my nose hairs and throat. Like something more than water going through me. Looking into the shiny steel pot I saw flesh double over and whine. The meat would be nearly finished soon so a half sprig of thyme would need to be thrown in. Perfect timing!
“Hon, will you hand me the thyme from the cabinet?”
“What would you have done had I not come into the kitchen?
“Please. This morning is sweet. Just pass the thyme. Please…”
She passed it, but not without something to say about it.
“I’m wondering about that shelf you mentioned a few nights ago. The floating bookshelf?” She pauses waiting for me to respond to something that isn’t actually a question. “The one with the marbled plexiglass?”
I loathe that, regardless of being told a million times over, she insists on believing that if she simply inflicts her tones a certain way, she can goad people into answering for things like a guilty child. She intends to make me speak like a toddler on display because I have frustrated her by something as simple as dry herbs.
“Well, all I’m saying is you look like the proper lumberjack. It’d be nice to get some handiwork out of you is all. Not that I don’t enjoy you making organic food for the dog. It’s just…”
This little dance was the most tiring. I didn’t mind the mother-in-law-like nitpicking or the insinuation that me taking a while to build another bookshelf in the house that I built from scratch with our contractor made me less of a man. And of course I cook my dogs food from scratch. He’s a pure breed for goodness sake! But as is the nature of the storm that is my wife, a purposeful drip can be more uncomfortable than water boarding.
But I told her the same thing I told my sister and mom when they asked. “Hon, you are worth every drop of effort.” And it remained true as long as I kept saying it out loud. One day I wouldn’t have to say it at all. That’s my hope. Everyone married over twenty years says it just gets easier after that. We’re six years in and I’m wishing I could time-lapse the next fourteen years. “And you look hot as hell today!”
That seemed to please her and she waltzed out of the kitchen. If it weren’t for the way we level out in bed, I don’t know how long I could’ve kept this up.
“Honey, I’m here for you,” I call after affectionately.
“Well it’s like being here with a ghost!”
Yip, yip!… yapping too…
Both good and evil doled out.
This can of worms I…
Trapped! You are my cage
Banging on your bars, palms bleed
No water, just blood
All the while we snooze
Sorrow billows, tears…. pillows
‘Tis better to have…
Clouds move, but don’t pass
Clung to me with “I need you”
Darkened day and night
Hot skin, cold air, bed.
Email—things spiral quickly.
Time to fight the day.
Didn’t feel as dirty as I wanted it to. Just hunting the deer and understanding the death of the animal… I later on smell metal as I feel the air coming through the grill in the truck. The doe sprawled across the front of my truck is the bloodiest part of my life. All else is peaceful and full of life. The only death is what I hunt.
We clock out at the same time also
So when the slivers of sun tiptoe through the office blinds
I recoil
And then recoil at the thought that this cave has blinded me
Until I don’t want to see myself anymore and my cubicle even less
Today, I’m at the freehand on Ohio (19 E), feeling fortunate that I can leave
then to
somewhere to sleep the same night
then to
my need to rush the gauntlet where people (are meant to) battle to meet (but ultimately fall short of) my lofty expectations
then to:
negative ruminations behind
and a mind to be sure when this happens next time…
I’ll end the war in a loft
some place more than just “somewhere to sleep the same night”