from the top of the first page to the end of the last day

I don't know how to put a name to what I'm feeling. If it were anything else, it would be:

music
A Lack of Color.Death Cab for Cutie
Don't Panic.Coldplay
Dreams.The Cranberries
Sweet Baby James.James Taylor

words
Ethan Frome
Nine Stories
Peter Pan Chapter 11
Lines Written Among the Euganean Hills

place
the state line
New York City

thing
snow-blanketed hillside
blue-black sky
dandelions
mittens
mix tapes
sunsets

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hickory handles

Today I touched hickory handles and realized that most of them were too large for my hand. I was in the hardware store, a misplaced event with a bent parking lot and missing paint marks.

Allie asked me, as we were heading away from iced coffees and toward paperwork, if I’d take her there to have keys made. Of course I would. I adore hardware stores, driving, and errands, so it was a winning idea all around.

On the front sidewalk were, left to right: a haphazard arrangement of potting soil on a wooden pallet, a small metal rack showcasing an assortment of sunscorched pink and white petals, and a small tower of tomato cages. The front door provided a break from the disarray, and through it we found two very helpful employees. Ray directed us to Billy, who would be making the keys.

The squeal of the shredding keys drove me deeper into the hardware store, past caulk finishers and red 6-pack coolers, drill bits and what seemed to be endless bundles of garden fencing.

I stopped in the lawn and garden section, partly because it is farthest from the front, but mostly because I love new shovels. I enjoy looking at the speckled paint finish and the new red and white labels, everything crisp and fresh. I love the clean weight of a spade in my hand, the cool of new metal against my fingertips. I feel the point of one and imagining holding it above unbroken earth, then plunging it in, being the first to leave a dirt deposit on the gleaming surface.

I touched bow saws and drain spades, new shovels and rakes, clippers that were half my height, and hummingbird feeders that looked dangerously dainty in their position. I walked through the aisle, up and down, imagining buying it all.

I could plant 10,000 gardens. I could have them in the front and in the back. Flowers there in the front. Vegetables in the back, herbs on the side. I could stay in this aisle for another 25 minutes and touch all the handles, breathing varnish and new cardboard, imagining my life with gardens.

I hear my name being called. It’s so abrupt and shrill, so very rude and unwelcome that it disturbs me more than the sound of the key-cutting. It reminds me that I’m still Amy on her extended lunch break, still Amy in the diagonally striped black skirt, still Amy who goes back to the office and sits in front of the computer for the rest of the day, deleting commas.

I took a longing glance at the little red spade I had first eyeballed. I thought of buying it as a symbol of things to come, of my commitment to my future vegetation. I lifted it and returned it to rest without ever taking it off the rack.

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something else

centennial park

Last night I watched the sky burn itself out. It was pink hot and crunchy white.

By the time I got to Centennial Park, it was all dusk and steel.

I walked with my best friend. We talked about music and writing and shirtless men.

We watched the bats, Goa Lawah on the night sky. We walked and plugged our noses and smacked mosquitoes and tasted fireflies.

We sat on a bench together, as close as a couple would, and drank diet sodas. We laughed and quoted lines from movies. We spoke aloud what we’ve both been sensing – that she’s going to be in a spotlight, and I won’t be toiling backstage for her. I’ll find my own. It’s a startling revelation and release, to feel free to pursue my own wild success.

Walking back to the car, I stared at the banks of floodlights that keep the model Parthenon illuminated at night. I wondered if they stay on all night long. I thought(to myself), “Surely, they must be run at least partially on solar power!” But the whole time I still talk to her, about the haircut she’ll get on Wednesday. About the photographer she’ll meet next week.

When we got in the car, I realized that all of my closest friends will be gone next weekend. They’re all on some kind of vacation, some kind of break from this place and its crazy floodlights. When they come back, it will be feet first into destiny. Her own business. Her new job. Her new record.

I feel a bit like I should as summer ends, not as it begins. I feel like camp has ended and the boy I met lives 3 hours from my hometown. We’re saying goodbye. We’ll even write for a few months, and flirt in our way through pens and paper and spit-sealed envelopes, but it doesn’t last.

Like I said, that’s just the feeling. It’s not the situation – nobody’s left just yet.

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word #7

tinkle

If a tinkle lost all sound, it would become a feeling. No more bells and china.

It’s in my stomach now, too near so I can’t tell you. So many syllables can’t slip through this throat-piece and escape. It’s tight there, where your memory lives. It’s cramped with too little breathing room. The air is polluted with nostalgia and scraps of origami paper.

The inhale chokes on a tear.
The exhale is freezing night air.

Black with stars, the sky that makes me remember home. I’ve lived too many places to pin it down. It’s there, without the dot on the map.

It’s you, but not with that face.

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