july flame

I feel as though I will never get warm.  I need the searing heat, the pressing humidity, the excuse to lie down in the grass and sleep because it is too hot to move but to sip cool things out of glasses.  I need the length of days and the closeness of the sky; the colors deepening in their ripe fullness; the sensuality of pressing air moved only by a hot breeze.  Here the air is too thin to hold me- I cut right through.  I need the heat because it holds you.

your brother said your mother was a firefly you buried in the earth

I woke up to gray skies melting towards a glowing dusk, the day was already old. The warm wind wakes the frozen ground and calls me down; the sea is back in my hair and the air tastes of salt and storms to come. Warm skin smells like lily of the valley and I am clean clean clean once more
 

Spring is beginning to come round again, at least here by the sea, now that I'm out of the mountains for a while. I'm back home for a quick vacation, of the mind and of the heart- it's surprising how much coming home can mean; how much it brings back what once was.

static

The winds came and with them a quiet. The constant static of the drops hitting tin roofs formed a sort of white noise that made thought unnecessary. She knew she had to leave

Maybe I'll fill up with rain and it won't matter whether I'm wearing boots or not.

This strange saltwater rain- and then I'll always carry the ocean in my curls.

distance is not for the fearful

Today was lemonshine instead of sun and I hung the wash very carefully out to dry. Been polishing the mother-of-pearl, coaxing life back into the finished wood, can’t let beautiful things die in dust. These days the wind blows harder, pulling and tugging with scents from days half dreamt, half remembered. My heart pushes with it, shh shh a little longer now dear, have to still it just a little longer. Must remember to tie down the shutters when its time to leave, can’t have things knocking about while I’m gone

indian summer

          The sycamore bark started falling in June that year. That should have been the first sign, but no one remembered to watch; expected anything like what came. Ignore the warnings and you stitch your own demise into your hem. The year she left, it was the summer of the coyote attacks. Everyone was scared. The animals came out at dusk- no one knew from where- they hunted in twos with almost human-like cunning from usually solitary creatures. By the start of July, three little girls had been bitten, no older than 6 and as young as 3. None had died but the men touched their shotguns with light hands and murmured that it would only be a matter of time.

          No one would remember that the moon had been curiously full for the past weeks, rising swollen and orange above the riverbeds which overflowed with a higher than usual tide. No one would recall the strange wind that blew in from the north that year; hot gusts that made the treetops dance till they moaned and knocked wires off poles. The wind smelled of blackberries and when it blew there were always more stars than usual. Things started turning up- things that had never been lost in the first place: buttons and keys and knives with mother of pearl handles, bits of glass and fine hair ribbons, gold-papered boxes, shells that belonged to fantastic creatures, and on the shore one morning, the delicate hand of a statue, fingers all broken off except for one, pointing out a judgment.

chez moi

I see my house clearly in my mind.
The weathered furniture rescued from flea markets, given love and a new coat of paint
Mirrors and shelves and shelves and shelves of books, bits of driftwood and old pictures- bottles found and filled with the tiniest shards of smooth sea glass
Clocks and papers and shells and dried flowers in vases- a perfume that smells like home and the salt air
And white curtains that catch the wind and dance for joy of movement
And my room: with the window and the desk and the chair so certain, I know already I know. The bright light and the fall of the pen and the remains of breakfast in the corner. Both clutter and space and full, soft white light. And the birds call outside my open window, my beautiful paint-peeling window.
My house visits me in waking dreams- does yours?

flyaway

This could be the beginning of the end:

If we try to stay back we'll turn to stone, you've seen the garden of twisted figures standing like warnings. You know we can't stay here, and that makes the days we have left even sweeter.

Surely this must be only the end of the beginning, there is so much more left for us

 

mademoiselle la pluie

Hello there rain, I suppose you had to come back sometime didn't you?

Here you are an old man who likes to keep the sun abed, but in lilting tilting french you are a young girl eager to make the world grow.
I don't know which of you I like better-
The you who cautions me warm and safe back to my bed and lets me curl up with silky black coffee
Or the you who takes my chin and tilts it up with loving fingers so that my face is awash with the new
Maybe I just love you

P.s. The mists are back. Please guide the ships home to harbour and don't let the one crash into the jetty like last time.

postacards from far away

The clouds came and swept me up, I am alone; I am safe. The sky tried to protect me, sending down bits and bits of snowy ashes- cover me up, protect me from the day. The wind howls to drive away, to scare anything that would harm me. I am safe. I am bright. I am full of light. She takes me and keeps me warm and I know what it means to be chosen for this, I don't take it lightly. When the days turn to rust red and the fences fall and stars turn to dust and blow away leaving empty dark, I will remember this morning of perfect white. this purity. Did guitars ever sound so sweet? This morning when the absence was not but a whole. I do this for me now.

would it help if i spoke of someone else?

{enter little brother} looks like it's time to wake up

snow day!

Because we live on the ocean, my little town barely gets snow some winters. Sure the rest of the state does, but it always seems to miss us by inches. We get one big storm each February, and this would have to be it!

And So I plan to spend the day reading Gatsby, drinking coffee, catching up on homework and being cozy.My younger brother and sisters have other plans for me, however... According to them we spend the entire day outside sledding and building igloos (that's how much snow we have now!) and then come inside and build a fire with hot chocolate.

We'll see where the day wanders :)

(photos from here and here)

easy as spotting

(photos)

I am sick again unfortunately, but the sickness is preferable to a double period of physics which I would have had today, so I don't hate it with all my heart (just the part that wants to dance)

you know who the dancers are because they may be too sick to go to school, but never too sick to go to class. Now the attempt will be to convince Maman that I do have my priorities straight after all...


Sitting in my bed, my sky is silver like an old man's hair- somber, not sad. The bare trees wait and if I look at the ivy, not the melting snow, I can almost convince myself that it's the end of March and I've made it through the coldest, darkest months.

It's a trick I have to play with my mind- a simple parlour illusion, like spotting a turn in ballet. I hang on to the dregs of autumn for as long as I can look back as the world spins, and then when I can reach no further- release- and snap my head around like an elastic, and there we are in spring.
With this I can trick time.

...it might just work...

January 2

January 2

come back come back to the world today- I didn't quite want to, but figured now was as good a time as any...

the tripping piano downstairs will make it a bit easier.
watch the fingers tumble and play back and forth back and forth.
they are confined to such a tiny space but
how many different melodies come from these restrictions?

I brushed up my room today- finally hung those shadowboxes I made a while ago... and fixed the ribbon on the typewriter in the corner. do you like?

photos are mine

safe home

hello hello and hello a late merry christmas to all!

I'm up in Maine with family for the holidays and it's been eating eating eating since the moment we got here. I'm not going to fit in the car to go home!

The days here are muffled by snow and you come to think of the house in a whole new way. It's your protector from the whirling wind that calls you to come dance. The house keeps you safe and silent and out of danger- a little shelter you built yourself (though I know I didn't really)

And when you survive the storm, resist the call, you go out and survey the result and build lookout perches from the rubble

Stumble inside tired but happy into that house full of food and animals and fire warmth and family and white cats curled up in the chair by the stove. And pie.

Cat's sneezing in my lap now...
There'll be more pictures to follow- Happy Holidays
photos

fog thick as stew

the fog rolled in tonight. driving along the roads by the shore, it was so thick you could knit a blanket from it. "thick enough for stew" grandma would say. familiar sights and places became strange and twisted, wrapped up in ghostly grey tendrils of mist.

on the road home, headlights from cars carried miles in the fog, illuminating the cloud from within. but once the car passed, it was just me and the mist.

in a small coastal town, when the mists come, it's no joke. everything shuts down- everyone goes inside. inside it's bright and cheerful against the chill, but once you step out, you wish you hadn't. things crawl in from the sea. you can never see them- they're good at staying only in the corners of your eye- but you feel them there. things that aren't meant to be touched. they brush up against you when the mists come in.

i had to jump over the threshold with both feet so the sprites wouldn't catch hold of the foot left behind and sneak a ride into the house to cause trouble. you never know on nights like these...

sunday is of

Sunday is of:

~ hot chai tea

~ rain tapping pat pat pat on the roof

~ wrapped up in the warmest sweater of all and the jeans that have seen this life

~ a good book and a good pen to scribble in the margins

~ bright red fire wet leaves slapped against my window

~ boxes of old photographs that smell of memory

~ and I hide from the day, from the cold, from the icy rain with a gold locket and key around my neck around my heart

listening to this over and over and over and over