Middle House Review
"He does not fret for need.
I’m sure when his lids nictate shut,
he dreams of water-green hide
and a deer’s total suppliance
nosing water from the bank’s edge.
What more could his slow smile want?"
"All the women before her waterskied on this lake until they turned 60. There was always one last turn, around the jut of land with old-growth pines, skirting sandbar shallows, over the deepest hollow of the lake. They came back, windblown and laughing, to hand down their skis."
"between sympathy and empathy. Your father’s
health likewise severing him from his hearing,
his memory, sight, and then his breath. Rowing,
as we all must, until we can’t anymore"
"I think, in the long run, energy is very rarely “wasted.” Sure, all that time you spent submitting 500 times could theoretically produce a novel… but it’d probably be a crappy novel. You gotta just put in the work. And you probably have to put in the work of both submitting and writing. It’s different work but it also kinda all needs to be done? I also think I’d be a worse writer if I’d known at 16, or 22, what I discovered at 25, and 30, and 40."
You are the one I cling to... future memories
following me past dawn, a wakefulness I can't find like ghostly
windows, reflecting birds hopping as voyagers (jerky and intense)
silhouettes mocking you and me. We unravel, already frayed,
our sideways dance (unreasonable) ending in soft circles
Momentum will only wind down (old clockwork toys)
leading us along when we dare dream of our past lives
"The whole of me is happy in the garden.
Soil smell drifts up,
brings something like
oxytocin to my brain cells,
I relax, smile, dig deeper.
I am covered in dirt:
ankles to knees,
even the folds of my socks
have dirt in them."