word #5

breakthrough

sugar waits every day for her breakthrough.

she wipes away other people's crumbs and stray straws of shredded cheddar. she's the haughtiest formica wiper of them all. she wears cracked black doc martens. she stands in the snow for her smoke break, camel lights and a stolen green lighter. she calls marty just to say, "i'm still ok, just like you promised i would be."

she dials the number with fingerless gloves. she still loves everyone, but she can never go home.

she still hates her roommate, but she's moving out in April. "marty," she says, "As soon as this snow melts I'm moving to Boston."

she hangs up the phone, finishes her shift, and walks home, smoking two more camels. tomorrow it's cheeseburgers at bethie's. tuesday it's a double at the taco shop.

the snow looms, glaciers on the concrete. boston when the plows stop scraping.

marty, tell her.

she'll still be there, no matter how she runs.

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word #4

food

i've been listening to a mix from a friend for the past few days. to say i'm starting to get obsessed with it would be a shadow of the truth. it makes such a great soundtrack for my days. tonight i sat in my car in the church parking lot, making myself feel the ache between the orange and the blue of a too-late sunset, that place where the blue is too white to be blue and the orange is too yellow to be seen.

i always hate the place of uncertainty; the place of "no good word." today, it was the inability to describe my bleeding filet from friday night. i wanted to impress the excellence of my meal on someone else. he said, "if you became a food critic, you'd have to expand your vocabulary." and I know he's right. there are minutes that i sit, swirling my surroundings around, trying to describe the flavor. I always want words of import and impact. sometimes they come. sometimes they fade under the wake of the sun. they slide off the horizon and the blue crushes in. tomorrow, it's a new start, a new chance to peel the colors from each other and describe the lonely places in between.

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word #3

sing

show me something to sing about and I'll show you a girl with guts and a crackle-fine voice.

last night I sang so hard at church that i could literally feel myself sliding off-key. i could hear the note getting sharper, I could feel my diaphragm pressing that hallelujah so tight to my heart that there was nowhere to go but up. the pitch longed to be pure, i think it always would rather be. between the pinch and pull behind my eyes, the way my heart was thumping in my feet, the way my very breath was wrapping around and constricting those words... the pitch never had a chance.

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word #2

minute

I was on the porch, writing poetry by peach streetlight. I was not expecting the new neighbor who creaked through the door and followed the sidewalk, bare feet and all, to where i was sitting, in all my affected glory, complete with sketchbook and mismatched socks.

"hi. i'm mark."

mark was born in England. he was an engineer working for the same factory as I was. on the weekends we washed our cars together. at night we ate chinese and watched kung fu. He bought me Trout Fishing in America, the Pill versus the Springhill Mine Disaster, and In Watermelon Sugar.

I had never heard of Richard Brautigan, except in a Sean Mullins song. He published his last book around the time I was learning to read, watching television that was "brought to me by the letter f." Richard Brautigan, in pictures, reminds me of Billy, in memory. Billy was my mom's first husband, wild eyed and blonde hair.

Inside the front cover were written the words, "Amy - I hope our friendship lasts forever. Christmas love of '99 - Mark."

I can tell you one thing with certainty about Mark Clark. Our friendship did not last forever. It slowly rotted and disintegrated, and the pieces vanished from existence. I found that book when I moved to Nashville. Forever is a strong word.

If you've ever stood motionless, upwind of a rotting friendship, maybe you, too, find comfort in the minute places of memory: notes on origami paper tucked under doors, the smell of Tuff Stuff, "This American Life" playing on the car stereo on Sunday afternoon, eating pasta at a low square table, legs crossed.

downtown walks. coffeeshop talks.

Sometimes, after a long day at work, I would knock on his kitchen window. Mark knew with a look the kind of day I'd had. "Let me get my keys. We're going for a drive." On the cool October nights, he would turn on the heated seats and open the moon roof. He would drive up the hill, higher and higher, until the lights of downtown were only a glow on the horizon.

"Your only job is to look at the stars, and the moon if you'd like."

On cool clear nights, I'll still be found outside, looking up.

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word #1

sulfur

When I was nine, my mom spent two months in the intensive care unit of Strong Memorial Hospital. Every few days, she was supposed to die in the night. Sometimes I slept at my grandparents' house, where there was no heat in the upstairs bedrooms. The sheets were cold and crisp. I slept on the bottom bunk. I would imagine I was somewhere else. I was a little girl in a book I was reading, and in the morning I’d wake and do my chores.

In the morning, the bathroom smelled of Prell and Lysol. The washer always seemed to be open. Through the window, I could see a dead tree.

Judy was my mother’s best friend. When she was available, I stayed with her instead; she was much closer to town. She had two sons that were my age. We watched Stephen King movies and HBO. I twisted my toes in the yellow and brown shag carpet. I slept on the top bunk. I was Geoff's sister.

When I woke up in the morning, my toes were navigating Hot Wheels and Legos. When I brushed my teeth, the sulfur smell went to the back of my throat. I could hear the stream hitting the drain, but I said in my head, “This is not water. This is rotten eggs.” I brushed harder, remembering the Cary kids, who used to come to Sunday School rank with syrup breath from the morning’s waffles. Somehow I was sure that the sulfur would give it all away. Everyone would know that my mom was 2 hours away, dying or not dying, and I was wearing blush that I stole from her bathroom the day after the ambulance came.

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ten words

Welcome to me, writing. I had a thought this morning, and the thought was this: Randomly pick ten words while dictionary-flipping, and write a bit about each word - impressions, memories, whatever comes to mind.

I had to resist the urge to pick the most interesting word on the page.

First word: sulfur.

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