As long as I’ve known him, my father has had a habit of making announcements. These are usually statements that someone else then has to make true, most of the time that someone else being my mother.

The car registration needs to be renewed.

The cats need to be fed.

I don’t need this anymore.

It shouldn’t have come as a surprise that the man would ( Read more... )

“And I feel just like I woke up in somebody else's skin
Who else is gonna remind you to take a picture of them?

Well, they brought hearts and daggers, they wrote songs about you
When they tied you up in the rungs of ladders
And you never ended up coming home, you just
Became something like some smoke that I tried too hard to hold”

“Smoke”-Brian Fallon
( Read more... )

The other night, Johnny asked what he would do when we’re both gone. How would he learn new things? Where would he go?

I said I didn’t know but that there are a lot of places to still learn things. I told him he can look things up and find people who can teach him things and that he would still be able to figure things out.

He said that he would be ( Read more... )

I think in a previous life, I must have smoked. I look outside and feel wistfulness among the clouds and the setting sun, the light slowly dying into night as I inhale and exhale the only comfort left.

Either that or I just romanticize one of the vices I never tried, given that I have very few vices to exercise these days.

Where to begin? I am now ( Read more... )

I’m at your place. It’s not your place now, of course. Even in dreams, I know this. Still, we’re there to celebrate. The valley is all there. Remnants of your family and friends, some who moved away many years ago. Some I barely remember.

I sneak away and walk toward my parents’ house. It’s not my parents’ house anymore either, of course. I turn ( Read more... )

You ever wake up way too early thinking about stupid shit you did in your twenties? Somehow, I still do. I’ve done a lot of dumb things in my life, but my twenties were an especially cringe part of my life. I’m not going to get into specific incidents because that doesn’t solve anything. (Besides that, if you’re thinking about any kind of specific ( Read more... )

Part of why I wanted to start writing again has to do with my meditation practice (if you can even call it that). I use a pretty popular app called Headspace, and my current streak with them is over 2 years long now. I think I started with them right around the time of my second miscarriage, but it could have also been the first. (That timeline ( Read more... )

On the eve of induction, I pause to remember. Not intentionally, even if it is always in the back of my head. I will life to continue though I'm acutely aware I have no control. I beg for movement though it sometimes hurts. It's never far away, yet I feel guilty being distracted from it, like if I stop thinking about the losses, I won't honor their ( Read more... )

It was a long, boring week. We finally had a weekend off after three weeks straight of work, and they made up for it last week by barely getting any work to us. I taught the new folks amendments and reprints. I did another round of teaching to our backup crew who helps proof when they can. Almost every day, the majority of the typists were out sick ( Read more... )

Grief hits in weird pockets, with no warning. Today it was during the beginning of a workout, that familiar welling up in the edges of my eyes. Here and gone. The rise and fall of remembering and wondering what's next ( Read more... )