(By D. Smith Kaich Jones)

the ever-wonderful michael was telling me about this thing that happened, and that’s because, well, remember? he said, that she is married to that guy? and this happened?, and then a while back when that was going on, there was this kid who . . . and his grandfather bought him this toy airplane, and he was friends with another kid, and did i ever mention that they moved across the street from these people who . . . ? and all those stories were separate from one another, but not really, they just looked that way on the surface, they were really all tied together, because that’s how stories work, at least stories in conversations, stories told by real people.

that’s what i think i do. at least that’s what i try to do. i start out telling you the story of painting the front room at work, and that reminds me of what i felt when i was buying the paint, the paint was yellow, honey colored, and that reminded me of autumn, and i remembered what i felt when i was standing in the paint store, waiting while the paint was mixed, lots of time for thinking and looking out the windows at the leaves falling away from trees, at the different blue of the sky, lots of time for remembering last autumn and where i would have been on a saturday morning, lots of time for wondering if my need to paint a few walls was a working out the grief i still feel for maggie-the-cat, remembering that’s what i did when my father died, not comparing the two deaths, just thinking about how people deal with grief and moving on, which is not the same thing as “getting over it”, it’s just moving to a different place in the grief. and i move from that thought back to autumn, which always gives me the blues, just not outside the window, and really it is late autumn that makes me feel this way; early autumn is just a phrase here in east texas, just a mellowing of summer, and i think about the leaves leaving, the turning away from the world that we all do; we go inside, even here where it doesn’t get all that cold ~ it gets cold enough ~ and i remember that that night is turn-back-the-clocks-night, an earlier darkness now, and i move from that thought back to maggie, back to my father, and i am filled with missing.

{Originally Published on Secret Agent Mama and originally featured right here on November 20, 2008}

Oh fiery colors, how short your stay,
Merrily tantalizing my sense of sight.
Against the blue sky, as if to blaze the way,
Towards the promise of a new day, bright.
It is in autumn that I reflect the most,
The end of the year spinning my mind around.
Like the trees that wait again to host,
My thoughts pause to absorb the sound.
Through the standstill, I look forward and back,
Considering past, dreams turn to a future of hope.
I wonder: Are the trees hopeful while they lack?
Or have they just found a way to cope?
My mind it is filled with worry and doubt.
Though my heart, a hopeful tree, dreams about.

(by Emily from In The Hush Of The Moon)

there’s nothing colder than a turned back and he shivers

we don’t fight often, and this isn’t a fight, more of a bruised heart and confused language and tripped-up-tired and finally, the back-turn

but it feels like a fight and it rips me because i wonder if he’ll remember this one when it’s over: just like the others

“what others?” husband asks, eyeing my burger as i bite, barbecued offering, and his salad which he says is fancy because of the shredded carrot and he hates shredding carrots and i’m already melting but i hate to tell him this

i remind him of years ago, when i wasn’t eating nor sleeping and the mascara-streaked pillows and the punched walls and the days he’d sit in the car for fear of coming into the house and he says

“i don’t remember that. i remember watching tv with you until you fell asleep. i remember the meals you did eat with me, the pizza we’d share, the popcorn, and i remember never waking angry.”

the carrots taste fancy in my mouth…

{By Stephanie of AdventuresinBabywearing}

Noah made microwave popcorn and in a span of about two seconds, max,
it smelled like moth balls and staleness and West Virginia, my Great Grandma Riddle’s mobile home,
cluttered with ceramic owls and rust-colored sofas and a murky fish tank.

Tonight we lay in the grass and I took pictures in the dark and the boys ran around like crazy people.
Gray carried his little bug cage with a lightning bug in it, his hands smelling like a lightning bug (they have a smell).

Smells like my childhood summers.

Once, when I was a little girl I left my crayons in a pencil box in the sun on the picnic table.
I burned my fingers in the colors… they melted and ran together. Made new colors. They were beautiful and naughty.

This is the kind of post you write to a soundtrack.

This is the kind of post I try to lasso time. This fleeting time. Time that slipped through a crack in the door long ago.

Gray wants to bring his bug cage into the house and I say why not.
I had pickle jars with jagged holes poked with a steak knife in the lids,
grass and sticks swishing and clinking against the glass, resting next to my bed.
I wished for them to light up as I drifted off to sleep.

In the morning they would be “sleeping” or had disappeared.

Put yr right hand on the nape of the neck and glide it up upwards to the back of the head.
Open yr hand wide, fingers lacing between hair or gliding on soft bald skin.
Direct eye contact always. Keep a distance between yr bodies but lean in ever so slightly.
Tilt yr head and let yr lips part. Move yr eyes up and down in tiny glances.
Let yr pupils dilate and stare swoony onwards.

{Originally Published on Doobleh-Vay}

I dream of riding the Orient Express

for two nights in a row now

I am in a bright cabin with paper and pencils

and very Bohemian in an authentic way

like the way I used to wrap scarves around my head in college

and head out to the bar for a drink

when it was not even chic- just odd

scarves that my Kurdish friend would give me

and how they were so bright turquoise

that I stood out from miles away

like a beacon to other strange girls

blinking and calling out

be the person yr supposed to be

and later you will be fine with it

I am on a journey and at some point in the dream I freeze frame for a second and hit some sort of intense epiphany- only I wake up right as I feel the hairs on my body stand and stir

it was like that yesterday too