Category: the whole shebang

lifeinonescene

~ hija15699 ~ 2 Comments

I crouch on a carpeted step where the stairway ends in the kitchen. I’m near the bottom, with my curly-haired little sister below me. Above me, I can just sense my older sister’s breathing, as if she’s invisible.

My father speaks: “I’m not going to be living here any more.” My legs press against the scratchy, low-pile synthetic carpet, dark brown. Do I smell the vomit of those nights when my sister threw up on the stairs? My mouth is filling with saliva. Do I want to vomit, or to cry? My eyes are burning, dry.

I think my head is pounding with the thud of my heartbeat. I’m afraid I won’t be able to hear what Dad is saying.

I have words in my mouth but I know I’m not supposed to say them. Dad is the one who is supposed to talk. I know this, because Mom is quiet. He is not saying enough, so she is glaring at him. He is not saying enough for me to understand what this means.

“I’m not going to be living here in this house with you any more.” I am smothered by the vague smell of vomit. The stairway feels like a tunnel and the space is getting too tight, closing in. It’s like a dream where I’m pinned in place; I can’t go up or down.

Praise piece based on Joy Harjo

~ hija15699 ~ Leave a comment

Praise the darkened rooms.

Praise the empty-handed father

sitting in the early morning dark.

Praise the unfilled wished for love

from open-handed father,

and the clenched fist of the mother.

When your sternum is tender

with sadness, whether from today’s

death count or the emptiness of 1975,

place your own cupped hands

before your heart. Praise sadness.

Praise the ability to breathe,

praise the breaths you wished to take

to fill the lungs of your second father.

Praise his death,

and his humble willingness

to stop breathing. Praise

his completed Income Tax forms,

neatly sealed in an envelope

sitting ready on the piano.

Praise this strange year

when the deadline is extended

out to July.

Praise not knowing what

summer will bring, and not knowing

how, and how many of us,

will arrive.

Praise the notion you’ve had

of the Great Flood, the one you don’t believe in,

that was a way to curb the bad,

to purge the overflow. You’re not

the only one to ponder at the drowning,

hundreds each day now,

of the ones in hospital beds or

not in beds,

the ones who are humbled,

and those who were certain

they weren’t meant to be drowned.

Praise the ancient test of evil,

the crushing beneath a board and stones,

the present punishment of lungs

imposed on all, whether or not

they be witches.

Praise the bearing witness to lives

crushed or those who will crush

your own, to the purging of the

good and pure, the breath, the heart.

Praise your own cupped,

good, empty hands before you.

Heading out…

Featured ~ hija15699 ~ Leave a comment

Please trust yourself: in writing, in Zen, in everything.

— Natalie Goldberg

These posts are from writing practice, minimally edited, if at all.

They’re fresh out of my mind. Or I am.

I feel like I did when I was 17, sitting in the navy blue stick-shift Chevette that Pop used to let me drive to work. I felt powerful when I drove it, shifting gears. The moment seemed so full of possibility, as if I could drive into my future that very day. I didn’t particularly know what direction I might be heading, but I had no serious concern about that part of it.

Just start.