Shaky hands please calm
Upset tum please settle now
But please don’t leave me
Shaky hands please calm
Upset tum please settle now
But please don’t leave me
Hot wind. Now I’m home.
Watermelon rose tea too.
Southern wife, sweet life.
(At the end of the 8 page dog boarding packet)
In two (2) sentences only!!!!!! tell us about your dog:
Hello I’m so sorry, but I have to warn you, you cannot raise your voice above a firm ‘calling to’ at my dog because if you do he will cry incessantly and it sounds so sad it’s maddening and not worth the effort to endure or to explain the backstory. Good luck!
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…
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
Mother from Ukraine
Father from proud land Haiti
Fight and cold always
She told her father
But he couldn’t disannul.
Head hung, she went on.
spinning side effects
dizzy, ditzy, heartbeat too
petals in a pile
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
Now I am supposed to grip your hand back
Otherwise you’ll try checking my pulse
Be alive. Stay present.
I was supposed to lean against you
but splashed Slurpee in your frozen lap and now you’re bluish
How long was I squeezing your hand?
Like a doula, you let me realize when the nerves were gone
And simply didn’t call me again.
What is not gradient?
What flow of time isn’t eventual memory loss?
What remembrance wasn’t each day feeling the real thing less and less and then transferring sensation into delusional perception—for the sake of not fading?
What isn’t gradient?
It should not even be a word.
What catatonic love wasn’t daily forgetting why anything was worth the efforts?
Who is born as man?
Who is born, skin already taught?
Flesh nearly ready to burst?
Ready to give up into deadly
nothing but still
Floating into air like interpretive dance and all muscles pulsing?
Who is born man?
What song isn’t transition from now until the end?
We’ve all been there.
We spend hours upon hours explaining our stressful days and anxieties to counsellors, professors, parents, and well-meaning friends. We spend so much time explaining how hard it is to conquer that we forget it often takes a lighter touch to alleviate. Of course, not all breakdowns or emotional weights can be solved by a few scrolls past satisfying imagery or a relaxing playlist.
But for when all else has failed, this is my go-to.
Simple images with simple color progression to remind me of minimalism, the comforting way nature returns to a basic equation of gradients, temperature, silence, and storms.
So for when all else has failed for you too–or for when you’d just like to scroll along, fade into some of my favorite Tumblr pages.
Enjoy and stay afloat.
http://naturalpalettes.tumblr.com/
http://colororangeart.tumblr.com/
*Feel free to share your go-to boards or pages with us as well*