Pacing my living room at 0617 while my phone was charging, I told my left knee to not act up. This was and had long been the day, a mental red circle around the last Sunday of April. My first real walk without crutches, a taste of what had been and will be again.
I decided to be bold and head for the base of Ulriken Mountain. Forty minutes at the most. Almost no nature involved, only streets and a four-hundred-yard stretch of rough and stony path turning steep at the end. Four years ago, I did another street walk on an early Sunday morning. The city of Bergen, Norway sleeps in on weekends and I was walking through deserted streets thinking about this desertion: even the dog-owners are getting lazy, when I felt something was wrong in a deep way I seldom feel.…
They told her she couldn’t enter a conversation or a relationship or a room without stepping slowly, without nervously reaching into the darkness and feeling around for something to anchor her. They told her that it wasn’t that she was careful. Being careful made sense. They told her it was because she was afraid. And maybe they were right. Maybe it was fear. Maybe she’d just been telling herself it was smart—logical even—that just about everything made her feel terrified: an eager smile from someone she only kind of knew, a call she wasn’t expecting, an awkward moment or mistake or regret from the past that she was reliving again. Everything made her head feel so loud, so full of voices that she only faintly recognized, all arguing and shaming her until they were all she could hear.…
walking down a new street at night, I lost a poem. Drizzle beaded on lampposts; mist circled the bare bulbs suspended like electric moons. Silent houses crouched together, warmed by glowing porch lights. An airplane disappeared behind cloud smudges; dripping elms flanked the yellow “No Outlet” sign. In the sodden dark, the vast alone had shrunk to one block, one house on a leaf-wet street where someone once lived.
I wish I could live in a soap sud And swirl in the off-white basin Lit above by three bulbs: Two warm and one broken I would rise and fall and ride the thin film of water Buoyed in a kaleidoscope of colors But there’s a tremor in the delicate walls Because a voice booms behind me 化学的东西不是好的 My own, much quieter You’re wasting time So I turn on the faucet And let the stream of water drown them out Once again I reach for the iridescent pink liquid soap 1-2-3-4-5 Once again I reach for the iridescent pink liquid soap 1-2-3-4-5 Once again I reach for the iridescent pink liquid soap 1-2-3-4-5 Then I dry my hands on my pink washcloth Before retreating to my room with its pink curtains Where I sit criss cross applesauce to confront The piles of paper on the unforgiving porcelain floor Is this how Psyche felt while sorting seeds?…
At the Flagstaff Fiber Fest, I arranged jewel-colored skeins of yarn tightly next to each other. Was I expecting a sellout? Not anymore. After tending booth at the biggies: the Wild and Wooly Yarn Fest, the Maine Fiber Frolic, the Black Sheep Gathering, etc., etc., etc., my inventory remained overflowing like detainees huddled in Mylar blankets.
I hadn’t pivoted to cotton like so many. In February, when the red light/green light tariff game began, I remained true to my brand. I naively dreamt of continued abundance. My business had thrived during Covid. Surely, forced out federal workers would need something to fill their time and would welcome fibers pleasing to the touch.
In spring, I bought dyes from China: the blues (pigeon, royal, indigo); the reds (carnation, jasper, ruby); the yellows (downy chick, lemon, topaz).…
