these are the random rambling of an 27 year old, overly romantic, and completely out of control girl. i like sushi, comfy blankets and long conversations. also, I like juice boxes and peanut butter and honey sandwiches. i have found that i am not in favor of growing up. also that art has really screwed me up.
You’re opening the door to your home or walking around the farmers market or talking to someone you love on the phone or laughing w friends over dinner or sitting on the couch or looking out the window of a car, an airplane, a living room, and an emotional breakthrough reaches out to you like an eclipse, a subtle shift, a threshold you just passed through without even looking for it
“When Daddy comes in, he carries you to bed. Is there anything you feel like you could eat, Pokey? Anything at all?
All you can imagine putting in your mouth is a cold plum, one with really tight skin on the outside but gum-shocking sweetness inside. And he and your mother discuss where he might find some this late in the season. Mother says hell I don’t know. Further north, I’d guess.
The next morning, you wake up in your bed and sit up. Mother says, Pete, I think she’s up. He hollers in, You ready for breakfast, Pokey. Then he comes in grinning, still in his work clothes from the night before. He’s holding a farm bushel. The plums he empties onto the bed river toward you through folds in the quilt. If you stacked them up, they’d fill the deepest bin at the Piggly Wiggly.
Damned if I didn’t get the urge to drive to Arkansas last night, he says.
Your mother stands behind him saying he’s pure USDA crazy.
Fort Smith, Arkansas. Found a roadside stand out there with a feller selling plums. And I says, Buddy, I got a little girl sick back in Texas. She’s got a hanker for plums and ain’t nothing else gonna do.
It’s when you sink your teeth into the plum that you make a promise. The skin is still warm from riding in the sun in Daddy’s truck, and the nectar runs down your chin.
And you snap out of it. Or are snapped out of it. Never again will you lay a hand against yourself, not so long as there are plums to eat and somebody-anybody-who gives enough of a damn to haul them to you. So long as you bear the least nibblet of love for any other creature in this dark world, though in love portions are never stingy. There are no smidgens or pinches, only rolling abundance. That’s how you acquire the resolution for survival that the coming years are about to demand. You don’t earn it. It’s given.”
excerpt from Cherry by Mary Karr, context being after a suicide attempt at age 13
My 20’s are moving too fast. Everybody’s so grown up now, and we all sit and talk about how life seemed to move so much slower when we were kids, lord how the world was so much bigger, and brighter back then. I’ve spent the last few years wondering why that is. I think I figured it out tonight at the intersection where that old blind man sells his handcrafted birdhouses.
It rained all day. The roads are wet, and glowing. The stoplight illuminated the traffic lines and for a split second I was 14. In the back of my moms old dodge. But then the light turned green, and I’m 22 again. Driving home from the grocery store.
I guess what I’m trying to say is, the world wasn’t bigger. Or brighter. It didn’t move any slower. We just had so much more time to stop and appreciate the rain.
we were robbed of the first month of summer, so if I have any say at all, I’ll leave the windows open long into September. my shorts worn with over-wear, my hope to sunburn through my sandals one more time; kicking my feet up to finish poems on the porch. by night, I smell the grass start to cool, the leaves stick closer together in the breeze before autumn erodes their embrace. I lingered in the sun as long as I could. I lounged by the boat docks and bobbed with every wave; pinballed through the city, mouth wet with laughter and whisky. I spun under the moon in a sherbet orange dress; kissed hard in the thick midnight heat. I say I’ll let go when the time comes. I think I will. we were robbed the first month of summer. it rained every day for three weeks. I’m always making up for lost time. this may be the first clean excuse I can keep.
I’m sorry. Miles Robbins acting out a panic attack so hard that he gave himself a real panic attack and said “let’s film it”. I adore this man with my entire being I need him to hold my hand
