Cold Spaces

The old wood floorboards push cold up through the soles of my feet. I know it's a real cold one when in the spaces between—when the furnace is not chugging—the chill comes back in and disassembles the warm. The cats curl on the radiators or bundle themselves at our feet on the bed. We each migrate towards the heat we can find and thaw enough to fall asleep.

Over and Over

Driving home, that song on the stereo. A newly found song I play over and over, it has this sweet spot that breaks my heart over and over; like when I played Shades of Scarlet Conquering again and again in my bedroom at sixteen. There will come that part when I can let the sky fall in my chest, here, where no one's looking. A cleansing, an exorcism of ghosts that never left.

False Sense

In my second mind I am everything that I am not; not yet. There are the multitude of notions and wish-fors that not only do I reach for with vigor but have already wrapped my arms around. This second mind whispers into the ear of my first mind; and my first mind says that it is just fine to go back to bed, to sleep. Because one day, upon waking, I will be who I really am.

More South

Driving south, more south than my south, not my beaten path so I see everything. Things I've seen before, the cigarette factory and the chemical plant where I worked once. It feels good, this road, like I never remembered it; today it feels like leaving. What if I were leaving this city again for an anonymous somewhere else? Today, more south might suit just fine.

Not Words

Life, not words; this is what I hear myself saying to myself, as if there were no bridge between the two. There was a time that words were home, more than home itself. But now I would rather do many, many things besides revisiting the house where I grew up. Life, not words. As if something grows cold and dies when I turn inward. I want to stay out and alive just a little longer.

What Came Before

Six years ago this house became ours to have our way with. Seven years ago we decided to join each other in our parallel lives. We are together now, we said; and we live here now, we said. Sometimes I wake up forgetting what that means, forgetting this tree has long fingery roots and has grabbed hold of me as deep as my vertebrae. What came before will never matter as much.

Arctic Beach

This beach has not been a wilderness since before the bridge was built between here and everywhere else. But the cold makes it wild again, wild enough for me, for us; us and the dogs. On a busy day we see a fisherman about a hundred yards away. Today, thirty degrees and windless, we own this large slice of the infinite horizon, not anyone else's favorite place today but ours.

Cold Falls

Cold falls like a firm hand pressing the breathable air out of the atmosphere, and everything is more silent. I walk out of work, late for home, for a long weekend, and I am alone. Into the fleshless walls of the parking deck I walk in the dark hearing not even the sound of my own feet. It would be easy to imagine the world actually ended and I am only just now taking notice.

The Absence of Bob

The bubble froth floats in the iron tub, and Bob the cat is missing. Not from our lives, not from the house; not even from the bathroom. Bob has grown big enough to stop trusting his agility. He used to jump and tiptoe on the edge of the tub, dipping his face down to a clearing on the water's surface. Bob sits on the rug, waiting for a safer minute, when the water drains.

Air Practice

We've gotten used to the low drone; we don't have to look up anymore. If we did, we would see more helicopters. Not the kind buzzing over highway cloverleaves looking for tangles; these have roomy green bodies like preying mantises with propellor hats. This is not a war zone, but in a moment, could it be? It must be practice for someone about to go somewhere else.

The Engine

The furnace roars awake; the solid churning machine, the engine of the house. When I first walked through, seeing our future in the walls and and circular flow of rooms, the basement was the final frontier. What's down there, I said, will determine everything. And there it was, the chugging mass, not so old, beating like a twenty-year-old heart. It said to me, say yes.

Hearing

The new chimes out back sound off like harbor bells; then I hear the trains from a dozen blocks away. And hours ago hail hammered down, the wrong kind of ice for January. Disparate things collecting and presenting themselves to me, my ears surprised with it all, like some blind taste test — this one the sea, that one the rail yards, then the deep and thick of summer. I close my eyes and the world expands.

Late Night Home Repair

Up to my armpit in lint, I reach deeper than hell into the dryer vent. I expect I could pull anything out, a tired old wig, a dead animal, the old bones of someone else's arm. What if, my manic neurons ask me, something pulled from the other end? Would my wife hear me from her half sleep through the ceiling, floor and bed covers? Then in a minute I am done, pulled out safely in time for sleep.

Little Heads

Splitting dozens of Brussels Sprouts in half, cracking little heads wide open to see the thousand little thoughts in each one; is this what my own brain would look like if weighed and bought for public use? I see nothing in these tiny brains that I can transcribe; some kind of braille my fingers can't read. But it made sense to someone or something, it must have, long before these reached me and my knife.

Wild Exits

On highway exits, I watch the land that no one else wants; the tiny forest or meadow inside the curling ramp. A wilderness that might stay a wilderness, except for the lint floating down from a thousand passersby. This is the kind of place that we herded our own natives to; land no one else wanted, not yet. On one exit I saw a turkey once, regal and grand, holding on to all the wild that was left.

Not Mine

The world I was born into, a hard egg, the visage of a mother and father and almost nothing else. The deceptive cheer of my father, a sometimes angry god, the master of the universe. My mother under his wing, a fragile mule, wit beyond measure, disastrous and sad. They left nothing behind except what I do not want; the debris of a thousand disappointments that are not mine.

Noah

A phone call, a feeling over dinner that we must call now, and we are transported more than two thousand miles just in time. There is a baby now where there used to be none, or nothing but the expectation of so much. It is real because we hear him crying, out of pain or weariness or bliss, alive and awake. A slow flash, being born; there is nothing else happening anywhere but there.

Windy

A scraping wind pulls the lids off of trash cans, blows the whole world sideways and I watch from indoors. I listen, things bang and tumble, things I can't name trailing behind the world's exhale like cans tied to a car tearing down the block. Wind like this disorients, turns me around and pours dirt in my eyes, like some metaphor for tribulation or the hard way through. 

Room

I stand in the spare bedroom and remember when I just wanted this, space to spare, room to move. More than one room to sleep in, more than one room to live in. After years of apartments too close to other people's lives; shared ceilings and walls bled talk, movements from all sides. This house is mine, the first mine worth having, less than two thousand square feet, a kingdom.

Last Day

Fake candles put off a soft glow in our bedroom windows; the whole house freshly scoured for company who will cross over into the new year with us. No one will come until morning, this night is for us to see each other only on the last day of what felt like a long cycle. We sleep, we wake before the sun comes up, just like plenty of other days, in each other's arms.