I have a friend who often talks about a need -- palpable, physical -- to be hugged or touched. I haven't understood that, being someone generally uncomfortable with physical displays of affection, especially in public. I have to really trust someone before I'm comfortable allowing them into my personal space, and there aren't that many people I truly trust. In fact, I'd say I have a slightly more exaggerated sense of personal space than many Americans. Stand back and give me more than the average 18 inches, please.

In crowds, especially indoors, I experience an anxiety almost like claustrophobia. I feel hemmed in. I get hot. I can't breathe. The desire to get outside, away from the throng of people, overwhelms me. I like open spaces and solitude, or small groups of people at best.

But what I have come to understand about my friend is her need to connect. I just do it with words. There are days I sit at my desk and feel like I could crawl out of my skin because I just want to talk to someone, to know that someone is listening and someone cares. To know that I matter. It is almost a physical craving, not to be touched -- although sometimes I think I could welcome that -- but simply to connect. Just connect. I realized recently that's one reason I write this blog, in the hopes that someone out there is reading and that maybe, even for a split second, I'll be able to connect.

Fiddling with poetry

These are poems I've been fiddling around with. They don't seem quite done, but I'm not sure what to do with them.


Bury This Heart

Bury this heart six feet deep
Where nothing can penetrate
No light, no warmth, no love, no hurt
Safe in a box in unending dark

Bury this heart at the bottom of the sea
A cask of sunken treasure
Its light, its warmth, its love, its hurt
Precious gifts forever hidden

Bury this heart at the center of the sun
Searing white heat blazes
All light, all warmth, no love, no hurt
Only ash remains


A Woman Need not Be

A woman need not be
the height of physical perfection
to be considered a goddess

She need only have
a divine capacity for love
a shining star heart
a soul of steady fire
the wisdom to forgive

Are you, imperfect man,
worthy of such as she?

Story of a Girl

Girl meets Boy.

Girl doesn't notice much of Boy at first. He's wrapped in silence, invisible. She is wrapped in armor, impenetrable.

But then Boy says something small, something unimportant, something unintentional, and Girl's heart sings.

Girl is scared by the flutter in her heart when Boy looks her way. Girl has been broken before. Her torn heart is newly stitched.

Girl fears Boy will break her anew, but she can't seem to stop herself. Piece by piece, Girl's armor falls away.

She's frightened by the feel of wind and sun on her skin. It's been eons since she stood exposed. But Boy makes her feel herself.

The last piece of armor clatters to the ground. Girl opens her arms wide and invites Boy inside.

Boy shakes his head and says, "I'm sorry."

Girl's arms drop to her side. She's seen this happen before.

A stitch tears in Girl's heart. Something cold seeps inside, like mercury running through her veins. She becomes the cold.

Piece by piece, she straps the armor back on. It feels heavier this time. She can barely breathe beneath its weight.

And when the armor is back on, Girl picks up her sword and strikes at Boy even though she knows it isn't Boy's fault.

Boy didn't try to make Girl's heart sing. Boy didn't ask Girl to invite him in. Girl did it knowingly.

But Girl strikes anyway because Girl is so tired of stitching herself back together.

Girl hates that she has done this, hates her own weak heart. She wants to take it back, but the time for apologies has passed.

Boy is gone.

Girl stands alone.

It's the same story every time. Girl meets Boy.

The Girl, the Anarchist Bookstore and the Typewriter

It gleamed on the table. Polished gunmetal gray like new. Like it isn't at least four decades old. Keys as bright white as the day they were made. Wizard Truetype. It speaks to me in its strange click-clack language, whispering of stories that will seep up into my fingers and out onto clean sheets of paper.

I hover over it for a minute, testing the keys, considering the expense. There is another in the corner, a Royal. It's cheaper. I look at the Royal, pick it up, weigh it, stroke its keys, but the Wizard's magic is strong.

It's only a $10 difference, I told myself. I just won't eat lunch out for a day.

I wander back to the Wizard. The clerk watches me from his perch at the front counter as I test its keys. There's no electricity in this machine, and yet it seems to crackle as I touch it. It's magnetic, the new relationship between this typewriter and I. I carry it to the counter. I think if it could, it would emit a contented sigh. We belong together, this Wizard and I.

I pay, wincing a little once I hear the total with tax. But again it whispers to me of the stories we'll tell together. I'm worth it, the Wizard says.

I note that the bookstore sells replacement ribbons. The clerk tells me the typewriters come from a customer who finds and repairs them as he zips the Wizard into its two-toned vinyl case.

I carry it to my car and drive back to work, stopping for a sandwich along the way. I feel light despite the overcast gloom of the day.

Conversation with the Cat

"Do you love me?" I ask the cat.

He only stares, enigmatic. He does not answer. Never answers.

He lies on the floor, black tail thumping against polished wood. His expression is one of disdain, as if to say, Silly human with your questions.

I do not believe he loves me. He loves only the metallic whir of the can opener.

Girl vs. Wal-Mart

So I'm walking through Wal-Mart this afternoon, sweating because the heat is turned up way too goddamned high and even though I've removed my coat and scarf, I'm sweating. There are too many people and none of them – not a single goddamned one – are paying attention to where they're going.

My mission at the Wal-Mart is two-fold: I need supplies to get through the rest of my long weekend, and I've promised to buy some Hannah Montana crap for a little girl whose family can't afford Christmas, and this vast wasteland of plastic junk is the only place that sells anything Hannah Montana.

So I'm walking through the Wal-Mart, pushing my cart with the one wonky wheel, because there's always one wonky wheel, and this voice comes on the loudspeaker, ringing out with false cheer, “We'd like to thank our shoppers for braving the ice and the snow to shop at Wal-Mart today!”

And I think, I didn't drive here on a solid sheet of ice for the greater glory of Wal-Mart, you fake bitch. The only reason I, or anyone else, set foot in this big box of suck today is because we had no other choice. In my case, I was out of toilet paper and this is the cheapest goddamned place in town. But don't make the mistake of thinking I shop here because I like it. You all know you've got America by the short and curlies, you greedy conglomerate bastards. Don't expect us to be fucking cheerful about that.

I'm checking out and the cashier keeps trying to make conversation. Another false dose of cheer. “So, are you all ready for Christmas?” And in that moment – for an instant – I understand why people go on shooting sprees because if I had a gun, that bitch would be toast. But I restrain myself and mutter with as much false cheer as I can muster, “Pretty much!” Which is true, because when you're single and planning to spend Christmas alone, what's to prepare for? Yes, I'm all ready with the frozen pizza and several bottles of cheap wine so I can drown myself until New Year. Thanks. But I don't tell her that. I wish I had.

I creep along the icy road at 20 mph and some asshole whizzes by me – passing on the right – because apparently he wants to die. Sorry I'm too slow for you. Fucking jerk. But I'm almost home, where I can set a big pot of vegetable soup to simmering and sip a hot mug of diet hot chocolate, because heaven forbid I actually enjoy anything in this life. But it will be good to get home, to crank up the heat and shut out the world and settle into my comfy thrift store chair with a book or perhaps my laptop and make notes for my novel. I'm off work for the next two days and I don't plan to so much as poke my head outside except to pick up the newspaper.

As I skid into the parking lot, inches from sanctuary, I'm struck by the realization. I forgot to buy cat food.

Scar Tissue

I sit at the end of the bar, waiting for my turn to sing. A bottle of Guinness sweats on the wood surface in front of me. It's mostly for show, ordered out of some sense of duty to the dark-haired girl behind the bar who always remembers my name.

A guy sits next to me. Clean cut. Blond. Nice looking. A little short. He orders a drink. I don't pay attention to what. He says something about the weather. I don't realize he's talking to me until he gestures toward the song book sitting next to my beer and asks if I'm singing. I nod. What song? "Son of a Preacher Man."

He's from out of town. He travels a lot, has sung karaoke in nearly every state. He likes country. Why is he talking to me? I should be social. I smile. I ask questions -- too many questions. I'm interviewing him about his job and cringing inside as some voice in my brain tells me he doesn't want to talk about this and why don't I ask him something else, but I can't think of anything else because work is all I know and I don't like country music.

The DJ calls my name. It's my turn to sing. The voice that explodes from my throat doesn't belong to me. It belongs to someone attractive, talented, confident. Not to me. I'm only borrowing it for three minutes. As this borrowed voice rises to the song's climax, the DJ flashes the lights. Some futile attempt to make me feel like a rock star.

The song ends and I walk back to my bar stool perch. The guy is still there. He smiles and nods. I try to think of something friendly to say, but my mind is blank. I don't look at him. We sit in silence while one of the regulars screeches an excruciatingly off-pitch version of "Turn the Page." The guy finishes his drink. Nice to meet you. And he leaves. I don't know what he wanted anyway. I lift the Guinness to my lips and take a slow sip. It's bitter.

The rotation is heavy tonight. It'll be awhile before it's my turn again. "99 Red Balloons." I flip through the song book, studying it like there could still be some surprise in its pages, some long-forgotten favorite my borrowed voice could polish and make shine.

Another regular who just may fancy herself Patsy Cline reincarnated begins her standard rendition of "Crazy." She's a good singer.

I feel conspicuous sitting at the end of the bar alone. I hop down from the bar stool and slink past her to the women's bathroom, just for a change of scenery. Inside is another regular. She's young. 23 or 24. I'm a million years old. We've chatted a few times about vampire movies and TV shows. She hugged me once just because I knew what "Spuffy" meant.

She's standing at the chalkboard hanging next to the sink. She's sketching a heart and drawing jagged lines through it. Then more lines. Short, strong parallel lines through the jagged ones.

Broken heart?

Stitched up heart, she says. It was broken, but now it's stitched. It'll heal, but it'll be weaker where it was broken and it'll be afraid of being broken again.

She drops the chalk on the ledge and walks out.

And I wonder -- how many times can a heart be stitched before there's nothing left but scar tissue?

Break in the Action

A girl walks into a hockey game.

No, this isn't the opening line of a joke. There's no priest, no rabbi, and no bartender, although she often feels there should be a punchline to her stories.

She walks with hesitation. She's new to the town, new to the arena, new to this whole life she finds herself living. She doesn't know where her seat is, and she's late.

She finds the entrance to the section marked on her ticket, the ticket she got for free from her boss. She has two, but the one person she asked to go, the one friend she has in this new town, someone new like herself, said he was too busy. She's trying not to take it personally.

She walks up the cement ramp, emerging from a dark tunnel into a blaze of light and noise. She stands at the entrance and looks around. A man leans against the doorway.

“You might want to wait to take your seat,” he says.

She smiles and nods, doesn't understand why he said that. She doesn't know the rules here.

She steps out of the doorway and starts to walk up the steps, looking for her seat. Immediately, several people yell at her. The loudest is an old woman with an impossibly tall beehive hairdo and a voice that's saturated with decades of cigarette smoke.

“Wait for a break in the action!” the old woman yells. Her voice is raspy, harsh. “Wait for a break in the action you dumb ass!”

The girl's face turns hot. She runs up the stairs, above where anyone is sitting so she won't block anyone's view. The old woman continues to yell.

“You're supposed to wait for a break in the action!”

“Stop yelling at me!” the girl screams back.

The old woman shakes her head and turns her attention back to the game. “Come on, Ams!” she yells in her smoke-soaked voice. “Come on!”

When the action stops, the girl finds her seat number. It's right across the aisle from the old woman, and someone else is sitting there.

The girl checks her ticket again. Yes, that's her seat. And someone else is sitting there.

She takes a deep breath and walks back down the steps to her seat. She asks the woman sitting there if she can nudge past her to the open seat next to her.

The woman gets up, “Oh, I'll move. This isn't my seat. I just thought it was open.”

“No, you don't have to move. There's no one else with me,” the girl says.

But the woman moves anyway.

And all of the people sitting around her glare at the girl because the people all know each other and know the woman the girl has just displaced. They glare at the girl like the girl has done something rude in claiming her seat, in not knowing the rules, in simply existing.

The girl sits and tries to make herself small, no easy feat for the girl.

“Come on, Ams!” the old woman yells from the short distance across the aisle. Her voice makes the girl's teeth shiver. “Come on!”

The girl sinks a little lower into her seat. She watches the rink, but doesn't understand what's happening and she's afraid to ask anyone, afraid to earn more yelling and more glares.

She waits ten minutes for a break in the action and she leaves.

She drives home in the dark.

When she walks in the door to her apartment, the cat is mewling at her feet. She picks him up and hugs him to her chest, because she needs to feel the velvet soft fur against her face, because she needs to hear the low rumble of his purr, because the cat is the only one who's ever waiting for her.

The Irresolution of Grief

I can imagine the scene as though I was there.

I can imagine my once-robust grandfather frail and jaundiced, the steady rhythms of a machine the only thing keeping him alive.

I can imagine my grandmother, sitting at his bedside, holding his hand, crying.

I can imagine him asking in a broken voice to be let go, it was time, he had made peace with God.

I can imagine my mother, my aunts, my uncle, clinging to each other, whispering over the decision.

I can imagine the machines being shut down, one by one, their lights fading to darkness, his last shallow breaths, family huddled, waiting for the end.

I can only imagine.

I was half a mile away, yawning my way through a class on communication theory, wanting to get home and watch something on television.

I was sitting on a bus that took me right past the hospital, unaware, unsuspecting.

I was struggling to prepare to teach the next day, trying to learn some model of persuasion my students would only remember until the next test.

I was chit-chatting online, e-mailing friends, behaving as though everything was normal.

I remember the phone call. It was noon. I was supposed to leave for a teaching assistant staff meeting. I hadn't done my statistics homework.

I missed the call. I was in the shower. I remember the message. My mother asking me to call, her voice breaking. I knew what it meant. He'd been sick more than a decade.

I remember picking up the phone, calling home. I remember that word meaning something. The meaning is long gone.

I listened as she told me he was gone. He had asked to be let go. He wanted it to be over. He had been in the hospital for a week this time. He couldn't take any more.

I remember wondering why no one called. A week, and no one called. Half a mile away, and no one called. I can only imagine.

I didn't cry. I got excused from my classes, excused from the statistics homework I hadn't done. I can't remember the rest of that day, or the next. I can't remember anything until the funeral. It was a Thursday.

I drove alone. I was the first to arrive. I walked in alone, into that room alone, through all of those empty chairs toward the casket alone, and I remember thinking that wasn't my grandfather there, it was just a body in clothes he once wore. The knowledge knocked the wind out of me, still knocks the wind out of me. I started crying and couldn't stop.

My mother said she was surprised I cried and my sister didn't. She thought I would have been the one to be strong. I tried to stop. I was ashamed.

I try to understand, my mother, my grandmother, my aunts, my uncle, each of them lost in their own grief. I try to understand why no one called. I can only imagine.

Things I learned as a Child

Don't talk.

Don't feel.

Don't cry.

Don't express.

Push it down.

Bottle it up.

Let it eat you alive, but don't talk about it.

Don't think you're important.

Don't think anyone cares.

Don't ask questions.

Don't dredge up the past.

Don't cause trouble.

Don't talk back.

Just don't.

We love you.

Saturday night outside a local dive

It's Saturday night. I have two parties to attend and I'm wearing that rare kind of red dress that makes me feel sexy. An old colleague I've missed is in town. It's a good night.

I meet up with work friends at the second party – a medieval murder mystery affair. That's what the red dress is for. I'm the saucy chambermaid.

When the mystery is solved and the party is done, some of us decide to go sing karaoke at a Chinese restaurant that has a lounge in the back. We meet outside and we're chattering pleasantly. Talk so small I can't remember it.

We walk toward the door and we notice a couple about half a block away. They're stumbling, hanging on each other. Drunken lovers.

The guy shoves the girl to the ground. She gets up and runs away. One of my friends runs after them brandishing a plastic sword. I fumble in my purse for my cell phone, but another friend finds hers first and is talking to 9-1-1 before I can get mine out.

We run after them, partly because we're afraid of what our friend with the sword will do. He's been drinking and I worry he's acting out of an alcohol-inspired bravado. But we're also trying to give information to the police – tell them what the couple look like, what they're doing, where they're going.

We follow them around a corner. A police car rushes by us, but goes past the couple, who are now walking back toward us. The guy has his arm wrapped around the girl. She looks conciliatory.

Our sword-wielding friend reaches us first. He says the girl said she's okay, but what we saw wasn't okay. We look at each other, all thinking the same question but no one saying it out loud. Should we just leave?

But the guy breaks away from the girl and shouts at her, accuses her of throwing a beer bottle at him. She lifts her finger to her lips, trying to shush him. She's seen the police car drive by.

But the guy lifts the girl up and throws her against the ground, like something you'd see on one of those wrestling shows on television.

My friend is still on the phone with the police and starts begging them to hurry. The girl gets up and the guy leads her away, around another corner.

I start walking faster. The cop pulls up beside us and we point, saying, “It's them.” He whips around the corner and stops them.

We stop at the corner and mill around, waiting to see what happens. I can already tell from the girl's body language with the police – she's tossing her head and laughing – what story she's weaving. No, he didn't do anything. Nothing happened. He didn't hurt me.

She's done this before.

And I'm waiting, watching the police, wanting them to lead him to the patrol car, but knowing they won't.

I edge closer and fish in my bag for my business card, the one that says I'm a reporter. I think maybe this will give me some credibility when I say, “I saw him do it.”

And the cop finishes talking to the girl, and she and the guy walk away. The cop walks toward us and I ask, “Did she say nothing happened?”

“Of course she did.”

“I saw him throw her down twice,” and I hand him my card.

He jogs back around the corner. When he comes back, he shrugs, explains the girl was drinking and both the girl and the guy say they were just playing around.

“That's not what I saw,” I insist.

But he shrugs again, says there's nothing he can do, even with four witnesses. He says something about my “perception of an assault,” like I didn't see what I saw. Like what I saw wasn't abuse, wasn't a crime.

And his face isn't the face of someone who can't take action. It's the face of someone who doesn't want to take action.

“But thanks for calling,” he says.

The sense of futility strikes me so hard I blink back tears.

I'll tell myself tonight that I did what I could, that it's beyond my control, that it was brave of me not to walk away, to give the police my name and insist what I saw was a crime. And maybe that will let me sleep tonight.

A sampling of poetry

Time is a slow physician.
I never believed its healing power
Until I tried to write an angry poem
And found my anger had left me.
I tried to dive to the depths of despair,
but I landed in the shallows.
And as I stood with firmly planted feet,
a song rose up.
A song of beauty and of joy.
A song of strength and of peace.
A strand of dulcet tones spiraling to the heavens.
As my ears delighted, I wondered,
What creature could create such a melody?
What voice could ring so true and clear?
With a wisdom brought by slow-healed pain, I realized
I am the singer.

-- April 2007


Poetry is a cruel bitch
She demands to be written longhand
In bed
At 2 a.m.

-- April 2007

Because poetry can heal the soul

I bought a book recently -- a dusty collection of the poems of W.H. Auden tucked away on a clearance used book rack -- simply because of the inscription.

For Heather,
Because poetry can heal the soul.
Love, Jason

I may never read the book itself, as I find I don't much care for Auden's brand of rhyming poetry. But it was worth the $2.99 I paid to have something I can carry to remind me that, yes, poetry can heal the soul. I don't know who Jason was or why his gift was discarded, but whoever he is, wherever he is, I love him for writing that simple statement, six compact words conveying all the truth and beauty that I, a stranger, needed in a moment of darkness.

I've been experiencing one of those long, cold winters of the soul, heartache blocking the sun like a steady gray sleet. But like the first desert wildflowers pushing their way to renewed life along my favorite hiking route, I am emerging to feel the warm spring air. My mind is in tenuous bloom, with petals of essays, poems and stories unfolding from long-dormant shoots. They're still fragile and will require tender care to reach full blossom. They could easily be trampled by rough, careless feet, or driven back into sleep by a sudden snap of cold. But in this moment, it feels impossibly good to have petals stretching their way into the sun, to have creativity healing the soul.

Snow Day

Today is the kind of day to stay inside, curled up on the sofa with a mug of hot chocolate and a blanket. It's December 9, the day after my 34^th birthday, and snow is falling in the Tri-Cities. It's wet, sticking snow – the kind that's good for making snowmen, snow forts or snow angels. I looked outside a few minutes ago and there was a boy, probably about 10, with a snowball in his fist, arm wound back like a pitcher, and a look of delightful expectation on his face. I imagine it was his first snowball fight of the year.

Rather than stay inside, I felt inspired to drive to Columbia Park and take a walk along the river. The park was deserted, and the snowfall so thick I could barely see the water. But it felt good to walk, to be alone, to be cold, to have snow on my face and in my hair. It was a time of simple, natural bliss – the kind that's been missing from my life for the last several months – a time of communing with the sublime, of reawakening the Romantic in my soul.

There was a time in college when I was captivated by the Romantic poets, Wordsworth chief among them. Their words inspired in me something buoyant and alive. I could walk across campus and not just see, but feel the beauty in every leaf, every flower, every stone. I could feel it on every breath of wind. I would walk with my face to the sun, soaking in the expanse of the world and feeling confident about my place in it.

As I grew older, my enjoyment for simple beauties was displaced by the stress of living an adult life – work, balancing my checkbook, paying the car insurance, grocery shopping, vacuuming, working out, trying to get enough sleep, heartbreak. These things have filled every crack and cranny of my life, demanding attention and importance, until there was no room left for anything else.

I'm trying to do a better job of finding the hidden spaces in my life where things like a love of Wordsworth still lurk, and the hidden hours that I can spend walking in the snow.

What's in a moment?

I've spent the last few weeks immersed in the world of Mileva Einstein Maric, the first wife of Albert Einstein. To be more specific, I've been reading Einstein's Daughter: The Search for Lieserl by Michele Zackheim. The book chronicles the author's efforts to solve the mystery of Mileva and Albert Einstein's daughter, born before their marriage and so considered illegitimate. The little girl disappears from the record when only a year old, and no one knows whether she died, was adopted, or merely hidden because of the shame her existence brought upon her family.

The book is largely speculative and one-sided. I'll have to pick up a more objective biography of Albert Einstein at some point to get a better picture of him, I think. But I'm haunted nonetheless by the crushing sadness of Mileva's life as portrayed by Zackheim.

Mileva starts with such promise -- likely could have been a great mathematician or scientist in her own right -- until she succumbs to love for her genius, and Albert becomes her world to the extent she fails her university exams and ultimately gives up her first-born child as a condition of her marriage to the man she adores. Even though their marriage may have legitimized little Lieserl, Albert apparently feared the child's existence would jeopardize his chances at gainful employment as a patent clerk in Switzerland. Mileva finds happiness with Albert for a time, but he eventually grows weary of her obsessive love and dissatisfied with her age and leaves her for another woman.

Mileva looks deeply sad in nearly all of the photographs reprinted in the book. In addition to the loss of her great love, Albert, and the loss of her daughter, Lieserl, she had to contend with another child, Eduard, who descended into severe mental illness and had to be institutionalized. The expense of Eduard's care drove Mileva into poverty. Albert shared with her his Nobel Prize money and some real estate holdings, but it wasn't enough.

I keep thinking about why Mileva's story resonates so strongly with me. I know the feeling of obsessive love for someone else, of becoming subservient to that love to the exclusion of self. I wonder what Mileva could have been if she'd been less desperate for Albert's affection and had more equality in their relationship. I wonder what Lieserl could have been if she'd been raised by her parents. Would she have grown to greatness? Would her parents have been more willing to claim her as their own if she'd been a son instead of a daughter?

Mileva had moments of happiness with her Albert. Perhaps that's all happiness is. Moments. Flashes. Impressions. A glance across a cafe. The intimacy of sharing a bite of cake from the same fork. Those instances when it seems finally that everything is aligned in your favor, when a touch is warm and conversation flows like wine. But the question, the unanswerable question, remains. Are those bright, fleeting moments enough to fill a life? If not, how do we survive in the void that remains?