It is a tiny exercise in faith, to trust that the shiny black path will be there, again, when I next look for it. It is a simple and perfect path, the length of the pool and back, and I follow it again and again.
It is a tiny exercise in faith, to trust that the shiny black path will be there, again, when I next look for it. It is a simple and perfect path, the length of the pool and back, and I follow it again and again.
Raymond D’s been living up the road from me for twenty years or more and he sits up at that bar nearly every night of the week that he’s not sitting on my porch and someone oughta ask him how he feels about that flag, but no one ever does.
The time we saw a ghost standing between us, the time we followed a tobacco trailer through the countryside until it stopped at the sea, the time we crushed the Lily of the Valley beneath our feet searching for mushrooms, the time we never found what we were looking for.
Everyone knows about the Dodo Bird, but who remembers the Golden Toad or the Arabian Ostrich? Bachman’s Warbler or the Bali Tiger? And what about the Caribbean Monk Seals? The Christmas Island Shrew? The Pyreanean Ibex, with its horns like daggers threatening the sky?
There will be no picking of magnolia blossoms. Feel free to pick Black-Eyed Susans, chicory, and other wild perennials at will, should you find them growing on the grounds.
Do you dream in clipped heartland vowels or a long southern drawl? When you dream of lakes and rivers, can you see clear through the blue to the sandy bottom?
Just outside the circle, the fan oscillates in a lazy circle, the fronds of the palm plant fanning us in its wake. Someone stands to open the garage door and we listen as night drifts in.
As a child, Sarah had been convinced that there had in fact never been such a thing as dinosaurs and that the archaeologists and paleontologists had somehow gotten it all terribly wrong.
Do you trust your neighbors? Do you agree that nature is the domain of spirits and deities? Is the river nearest your home polluted? Do wild animals affect your life? How much do you pay for rice?
I’m really sorry I skipped my in-school suspension to walk around downtown and smoke cigarettes. I’m just so into exploring cigarettes right now – I think they’re part of my process, you know? Like, the initial fire and then the slow burn and then the broken, dirty stub – I think for sure there’s a metaphor in there, I just don’t what it is yet.
Above me is a map of the world. Australia sits sweetly above my head in camellia pink, and beside me a jade plant pushes its dozens of green palms into the sugared air.
...it seemed blasphemous somehow, thinking about Jesus as a toddler, or worse, a baby in diapers. But, Ashley supposed, he must’ve been one once, right? She had never thought much past the infant in the manger bit, like somehow in her mind Jesus went from infant to grown man to savior on the cross, but of course it couldn’t have happened like that, even if Jesus was a miracle.
