8.5.13

a biscuit dream

Come over and make biscuits with me. Knead them, let them rise. Brush my arm with your floury fingers. (I don't want to go out, but I don't want to be alone.) Let the yeast grow. Listen to the music. We can talk about new bands, and our favorite funny movies, and places we still want to go. Let the timer surprise us into laughter. Dough in the oven, and everything smells like heaven. I sit on the counter with my feet swinging. We wait. Biscuits on the counter, steaming, I get out the butter, the honey, the jam. You hold the refrigerator door open for me. Knives. Napkins. Crack them open, watch them steam. Watch the butter slip liquid and golden into the tiny biscuit-hollows.

Friends and biscuits. That's all I want today.

cloudy days

"Sweet pretty happy girl," you said on that bright morning, and for a moment, I felt like something of shining value.

Sometimes I wonder how you see me now. If I'm worth less to you because the thunderclouds have covered my face.

I'm still here, you know. Behind the stormy grey, I'm still shining. Maybe it's harder for you to see. Maybe you've given up on me.

But you don't determine the sum of my worth. If I have dimmed in your eyes, it's a symptom of your vision, not a lessening of my strength.

I may be sad, but I have joy. I may be scared, but I have hope.

My God is the ruler of peace and storms alike. Even if you walk away, I will not be alone. Someday I will be free again. I will be warm. I will shine with a strength you've never seen before.

(You can put up your umbrella and wait for fairer weather. It will hurt me. But I will not fault you.)

(In spite of rain, I will always love you.)

stars

Milky Way over the Alps by Leonardo Orazi

unwritable things

I'm thinking about people who don't write. I wonder what it's like to feel emotion without having to put it into words. How does it work? Where does it go?

When writers fall in love, they keep it all. Pages and pages of sprawling metaphors bleed out: letters and poems and secret confessions, things for the world and things for no one else. It's as though by capturing the sparks on paper, we imagine that they will always remain the same.

But what about the others? Those people who don't write -- what do they do when they fall in love? If they don't try to cage their feelings behind black and white bars, do they send them out in the world? Do they give them away? Do they live them? And does that make them better people?

If you have answers, tell me.

Show me.

ten things

1. Freckled knees
2. Sister kisses
3. New books
4. New people to talk about books with
5. Pyrotechnics
6. Haircuts
7. Comic books
8. New words
9. Summer storms
10. Watermelon

7.2.13