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Mushrooms

Soil and wood, paint and stucco: different media occupied my time. And yet my hands hungered for the written word.

Slippery, time delayed a sentence, tabled a thought that would otherwise be grown into a tome.

Birds nested, plants grew, wilted, and sprouted again—all while I conjured life from a sandy tomb. I found myself working my mind, expanding it, letting the depth and coolness of the soil I tended take me into darkened rooms, a dusty attic primed to be cleared.

Dark bluish-gray rocks hugged the softened mulched mounds pocked with cacti, their overwintered pads plumping to greet the spring sun. Lizards shuffled beneath orange globemallow’s pollened cups, within which bees thrummed; thrashers crashed about the four-wing saltbush and swooped to snatch the occasional grub upturned by seed-searching pigeons.

All around, denuded earth had begun its repair.

Thoughts faded into the background, and with them ruminated past chapters—the passing glances, clandestine kisses, heartaches, heartmends.

From the limbs of the shaped evergreen—an upturned umbrella dancing in moonlight—wind-shattered chimes clanged in cacophonous asynchrony: a plaintive song to the approaching desert night.

All around, life continued to spring from the rot of others: mushrooms on a log.

***

We’ve been starved of unfettered life and peace; scouring ravaged lands pocked by broken promises of futures unrealized. A perpetual exhaustion. A perennial exultation.

When we sit and ponder, we’re free. With minds untethered to the next task, the looming deadline, dodging sycophants and narcissists, we escape inwardly—stretching muscles so accustomed to intentional atrophy through absorbing endless propaganda, narrowed, convoluted narratives justifying subordination.

But when our minds are free, we deduce, analyze, process, draw our own conclusions, and—for the bloated capitalist, the most excruciatingly terrifying step—take action: small or large, iteratively gradual or decisively sharp. In those fractions of thought, we are ourselves; we own our immediate future. 

And continue to grow through those decisions.

***

Even on the darkest mornings, birds still sing—having the courage to break the void, call to those unseen, and join the awaiting chorus.

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Threshold

Words had escaped me—the ability to bind them into narrative lost for an evening, a weekend, before months had blurred away as I raced toward an ever-distancing finish line that no one ever crosses. 

Since returning to New Mexico, I’d attempted to recover fragments of what I’d lost. But like piecing together a shattered mirror, the gaps in the mended portrait remained glaring—a distorted image reflecting what was and what will never be. So, in the wake of one life chapter’s grand unraveling, I identified the stronger elements that remained—the familiar, malleable threads to weave into a protective shawl to stave off the chill of yet another new beginning. 

Before I knew it, winter had set in; I wrapped into myself—and wondered what a pandemic-plagued future would look like, and where I’d be. And then, one day at my computer, I felt a sudden heaviness heaped upon my shoulders, and was exhausted, utterly depleted. I knew. Days later, awake in a pool of sweat, my legs on fire, head throbbing, I, again, wondered what future there would be. A week later, my legs felt extinguished; I wobbled less. Again, words escaped me.

Tolls climbed, the political landscape fractured further, and my apartment walls closed in—with each night punctuated by my neighbor’s drunken cry-moans bleeding through our shared wall, until, one night, I found him face-down in the front yard amidst scattered pots and broken plants: his downward spiral had bottomed-out.

I’d reached down, nudged him—asked if I could help him into his apartment. Glassy-eyed and somewhere far afield, he stared up.

“Oh. No. I’m ok here. Night night.”

I eyed a broken garden light’s globe slowly spinning atop the sidewalk, and tracked my gaze down the darkened windows of the adjacent apartments; no one, save him and one other tenant, remained.

Without prompting, he muffled into the dirt.

“I’m ok here.”

I sighed, turned, and walked back into my apartment.

I’m not.

***

GoogleMaps bellowed, “Make a u-turn!” as I pressed my ear into the phone, cradling it against my chin, and pulled up to a curb in an unfamiliar neighborhood—my loan officer waiting patiently as I scrambled to find paper in my glove box and a pen whose ink hadn’t been dried out by the desert heat.

I asked her to repeat the time-sensitive next steps and what I had to do to lock in my interest rate. A litany of figures and percentages later, I hung up, cut short my plans to deliver the cashier’s check for earnest money to the title settlement company, and headed home. Hours later, I’d e-signed another compendium of mortgage papers and completed a required online course for prospective homeowners.

For a year, I’d watched as houses around the neighborhood got snapped up by Californians, Texans, Washingtonians, New Yorkers, and Coloradans. Prices soared, and I challenged myself not to lose hope. As a kid, I’d envisioned living in a rambling Gothic mansion in the woods; as an adult, that Gothic mansion transformed into a 1977 RV. And while I’d worked on my RV and convinced myself then that I’d never again focus on a “sticks and bricks” house, my chronic pain made me recognize that insulation and hot water were not overrated.

Still, I remained conflicted. Private property and capitalism and all of the pervasive, unjust systems of colonialism were anathema to the future I wanted to help shape. I also knew that my current housing arrangement was unhealthy, and that, if I moved, I’d be paying as much if not more in rent than I would be for a mortgage—and would be in less of a position to help build community power.

I debated for months before recognizing that what I wanted to do was steward a home—hold space to create a nexus for community building and mutual aid—while taking care of myself. As with most decisions, it was an imperfect one—shaped by compromise and the reality of our times.

I knew snagging a property in such a highly competitive market was not possible for a single nonprofiter with little savings. So, I bided my time and trusted my instincts; I kept saving what I could and waited until the depth of winter—when real estate markets typically slow.

***

It was an odd-looking home that I first noticed on my way to physical therapy. Perched on a corner, it appeared architecturally distinct from the other low-slung, stuccoed forties-era homes—with mid-century lines and large windows. And it happened to be in one of my target neighborhoods; it seemed empty, and there was no sign in the yard. But one night as I scoured listings, it popped up. I wove through the virtual tour and stopped at the photos of the back yard: an expanse of sandy undulations bounded by a concrete block wall, with a small shed plunked off-center. I added it to a list of two other homes I’d come across, and reached out to my realtor. The next day, I walked through them all.

Crossing the weathered threshold, I didn’t hear bells chime nor did the clouds part; I didn’t fall in love. By the time I’d gotten to the home-touring stage, I’d begun humming a reminder to myself.

This isn’t a love affair. It’s an investment. Take your time. Make it count. Listen to your gut.

Viewing each home became a decidedly emotionless process—training an investor’s eye on the pros and cons each home afforded. And while I acknowledged charming aspects, I focused more on the main systems, flushed toilets, investigated cabinets for mold, and assessed its equity-building potential. I couldn’t get attached, and let a charming facade detract my focus from the skeletal roof, or a price point obscure the fact that I’d probably be a hate crime inside of a month. With my retirement wiped out in the early months of the pandemic, any home I stewarded would be both a community-building center and a reserve piggybank.

At the end of the day, I’d made a decision—on which I slept, before pursuing next steps.

Multiple inspections, negotiations, and bouts of second-guessing later, I walked into the title settlement office and sat opposite the officer—partitioned by a Plexiglas shield: a sign that the pandemic was far from over. I left with a binder of documents, and would receive the keys to the mid-century days later.

It was done.

I closed my car door and screamed—a mixture of joy and exhaustion.

***

Movies always made moving into a home appear to be a romantically fluid process: a little dusting and mopping and, suddenly, all of the boxes were unpacked and life continued. But the pandemic remained, and I wanted as few people traipsing through the house as possible; so, my Virgo self made trip after trip in my truck, and performed spot house maintenance as I could.

One night, I returned to my nearly empty apartment and heard the familiar sounds of my neighbor reeling from their latest bender: pots crashed to the floor and something shattered. And that was it: the final straw.

Minutes later, I dragged out my mattress topper, tucked JoJo and her crate into my front seat, and spent the early hours of the night settling into my new home.

JoJo sniffed every dusty corner while I, bat-in-hand, investigated the source of bangs and clanks coming from the utility closet. But instead of finding someone ripping out copper piping or a rabid raccoon nesting for the night, I became acquainted with my 20-year-old water heater.

I went back inside, pulled out my “to update” list and scribbled a star beside “hot water heater.” Shortly thereafter, I installed a new shower head and leaned into the warm spray.

That night, for the first time in months, I slept through the night.

***

Lamplight fuzzed from a corner of the living room and my avocado tree’s leaves danced alongside the curtains—heat billowing from the vents as snow drifted down outside the cracked, reliable windows and soaked into the parched desert floor.

For a moment, it was quiet—with JoJo tucked into her beloved blanketed bed down the hallway, and few cars buzzing along the avenue. As my knees pressed into the cold concrete pad and ground into the remnant linoleum flecks, I pursed my lips and whisper-sang a familiar song—a lullaby of sorts to make the hallway’s darkness and the blood-like stain I’d just uncovered seem less foreboding.

For whatever reason, I’d decided at 9PM on a Friday to remove the broken, likely asbestos-laden linoleum from an awkward partitioned section of the house that included a half bath and laundry area. And under one strip, an irregular stain radiated from beneath the baseboard. I paused and assured myself that, no, there definitely wasn’t a body stuffed inside the wall above. No way. Nope. Nope. Nope.

As timing would have it, earlier in the week I’d come across an old folio stuffed in a dark corner of the garage—and in it were meticulous records of systems updates; the original blueprints were tucked beside it, and included the workshop addition, where I sat in a pile of broken linoleum. Knowing it was a workshop, I kept scraping the floor. A few tiles over, there was a similar stain, and beneath more, others. It appeared that the workshop pad received a fair number of oil and solvent spills. I could deal with those with much more understanding than a decaying corpse inside a wall.

I reached the end of the linoleum, and swept up the aftermath. I ran my hands along the floor to free any stubborn remnants and dislodged torn note scraps tacked into the unpainted sheet-rocked wall; I wondered about their messages—for whom they were reminders. Behind me, in predictable cadence, water dripped from a stripped valve into the washer’s outflow basin.

Another to-do.

The house was built in 1958. I’d probably never know how many people lived here, called it home—celebrated, mourned, and just existed within it.

Now, though, it was my turn.

***

Seeds clung to the stained paper towel scrap—stored in an old hair conditioner bottle during my time in Alabama; I’d remembered folding them into one another, a vessel tightened with hope and a longing to be reopened as another, more fruitful chapter was being written.

I tore off a corner and sunk it into the warped raised beds I’d brought over from my apartment.

Wind danced through the chimes hanging from a rusty eye hook set by a former tenant—someone who may have peered over the sandy backyard and tossed one of the hundred or so cigarette butts I’d collected and tucked into old, sun-bleached Cheeto bags along with broken glass and rusted car parts.

Around the sawed-off bases of the last tenants’ ad hoc windscreen, desert globemallow grew in tiny tufts. I mounded berms around each patch until sections of the backyard looked like a mole went berserk. But within each depression, flecks of green cast small shadows against the sand—as ants scurried beneath and finches and doves eyed me suspiciously from overgrown branches.

Out from the sand I’d cajole and shape a mini ecosystem, one that I hoped would bear fruit for me, the community, and my feathered and scaled and insect neighbors.

For years, I’d felt trapped; my mind clouded with darkening, fragmented thoughts: jagged edges curving inward, making a circle—a maze navigated simply by a mouse or linear ruminations, flowing along a predictable, entropic path. After multiple setbacks, I’d minimized my voice and goals and vision for the future to a collective point of obscurity.

As the sun cleared the last of the neighbors’ roofs on its downward track, I stood with my toes in the sand, and acknowledged that there’d be many more twists and turns ahead. And that, of the many voices in this world I imbue with power, mine must be one.

I took a deep breath, smiled at JoJo laying out on the heat-emanating patio.

You’ve got this.

Back inside, I tuned the radio to a familiar station as Beyonce’s Halo queued up. It’d been an ode to self-care and self-affirmation—to which I’d listened repeatedly as I sat collapsed in a field across the country two years prior, having lost what I’d carefully built.

“I know you’re my saving grace. You’re everything I need and more…”

As the melody drew on, I rounded the corner into the hallway and caught a glimpse of my reflection in a mirror propped against the wall. My hair was a mess and my arms were tanned by hours of yard work.

After a few more lyrics, I turned out the light, a smile creeping across my face as the light’s mirrored refraction dimmed and the room grew dark.

***

Sweaty, I drove across town in my dented pickup with one mud flap and three hubcaps and a crackling speaker that zoned in and out blaring a horrible pop song that I hollered out the open windows. I coasted through my old neighborhood, past the darkened rooms where I used to live, and rolled to a stop.

The speaker crackled a new song to life, and I flicked the turn signal—and rattled down the avenue, into the night, back home.

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A Stranger Pumpkin

January

Midnight and morning jockeyed beneath the moon’s watchful glow as JoJo pitter-pattered through inky shadows toward the abandoned schoolyard—where a wind-shredded butcher paper sign reading, “We Miss You,” smacked against rusted fencing: a siren call from contagion, or slow applause for our approach—meanings blended within hollowed, desolate spaces.

JoJo nosed around a grand cottonwood’s trunk as I attempted to stave off sleep’s departure from beneath heavy eyelids—longing for still warm sheets blocks away as steam-pulsing pipes running along the school’s facade conjured an equally welcoming image of boiling coffee.

Fully spent, JoJo pulled back toward the empty streets slicked with frost as we ambled back to our lit porch—her ears pricking into the wind, toward a nebulous form galloping down the asphalt. But before I could stoop to gather JoJo, much less to reach for my pen knife, the coyote barreled past—stopping momentarily at the school’s gate to cast its yellow eyes upon us in quiet consideration before slipping between the posts, melting into darkness.

I turned the deadbolt and tucked my shoes away, and angled toward the bedroom. Pillows curved around my temples, pressing long-uncut curls into my ears.

And then, as sleep lapped against my lids, a haunting coyote yowl echoed along the empty avenue—rousing a canine chorus from neighboring houses, to which JoJo lent her voice.

Coffee it is.

***

February

The small hand washer bucked back and forth as its soaked contents slopped around. Back bent and neck tensed, I attached a tube to the washer’s underside, letting the soapy water trickle down the bathtub drain.

Outside, the sun shone brightly, but the air blew cold, chilling my ears.

Neighbors’ laundry clung to the rusty cables stretching between corroded, T-shaped anchors. And as I added mine, I felt us all slip in time—reminded of the subtle luxuries we’d enjoyed, each of which the pandemic continued to bring into startlingly sharp relief.

An hour later, with my tees frozen rigid, I chided myself that I still had a lot to learn.

***

March

There would be no more parties, not that I attended many anyway.

Like most, I’d cajoled my mind into supposing that each day was guaranteed by virtue of waking into it—that the nightmares or fanciful dreams into which I’d descended the previous night would not be my last, that my breath would not escape in one final gust, leaving my husk to bloat beneath the sheets.

And yet, knowing that I’ll never be gifted with the foresight to know the quiescing time of my demise, I’ve continued, like so many, to grind out my life, like a cigarette blunted and snuffed, at the altar of capitalism: overly consumed with getting ahead, of managing every step as though it were part of a carefully orchestrated ballet. 

Each day, as the toll rose—families fragmented, communities decimated—it became all the more obvious the odiousness of the system to which we’d sacrificed: grasping how much we’d inflicted upon our bodies—aching bones and ground teeth and shooting pains about the wrists and dull, persistent knots down the back.

Still, amid it all, there was a demand for more.

***

April

The walls behind my headboard seemed to breathe, through plaster and desiccated rat carcasses: the cloistered air musty.

Or maybe it was my neighbor’s failing body struggling for air, reaching down into what was left of their lungs for the next gulp—pulling from the darkness any semblance of a future, arcing toward morning as the police sirens faded. Or perhaps they were talking in their sleep to a nonexistent lover.

Protracted solitude had a haunting effect.

***

May–August

It was a gift of memory, one of warmth.

He’d delighted in watching me lean into the shower’s steaming spray, the water spiraling though my curls, beading along my shoulders—muscles relaxing and toes extending along the basin, reveling in experience.

Rarely did I fully grasp the enormity of those moments—of sharing intimate space, the joy of the mundane—until after romance ebbed.

But perhaps that’s how it’s supposed to be, so that there’s something to smile about years later, as you bid another lover goodbye and welcome, again, your own faithful reflection.

***

September

They wore a smoky cat-eye that pulled attention from their mask. Creased at the corners, their eyes disclosed a smile, and I reciprocated. 

“Well, anyway, I have leftovers a friend brought me from her family.” They’d framed the remark as an embarrassing admission of imminent solitude—of being, like many, with themselves for the evening.

And I found myself stifling a chuckle—not at them, but at the predilection so many have fostered: that spending time with your quieted self-conversations was a ruse—a manifestation of deflected adoration; in those moments, I’ve come to recognize that I’ve kept far worse company.

Because who I am and who I’m creating, nurturing, and empowering are not so dissonant that they cannot be reconciled within the seasoned sinews of my heart.

***

October

I plucked the pumpkin’s rotting hull out from between neighbors’ garbage bags: a sunken smile collapsing in on itself and taking with it two asymmetrical eyes—right into my compost bin.

I mused that it might be the afterbirth of a fairytale from which a carriage might spring along unfurled tendrils.

Or perhaps it wouldn’t change into anything; perhaps it’d transformed already—as midnight’s toll struck long ago.

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Boomerang

Adobe walls, still warm from the desert heat, presented fall’s chill with an acquiescent compromise: it may lay claim to the morning, but the beating sun still held the day.

Condensation wicked down the sun-clouded casement windows as a great metallic monster heaved beneath the irredeemably dirty wooden floor. And with it, the smell of crisping dust drifted through the bedroom’s doorway. Joanna straddled the threshold, her ridged back facing me as I emphatically reminded her that the floor would not devour her—as it had refused the nights before. Still, she stared at the heater grate skeptically; the apartment had not been cold when we’d arrived mid-August; but now, as the occasional snow-glutted clouds cluttered the sky and wept voluptuous flakes, the aged beast clanged to life. And each sizzled pulse that rose from the floor reminded me that I was far from the life I’d carved out inside my ’77 Beaver motorcoach months, a lifetime, before.

New Mexico’s pull—a persistent siren call—came unexpectedly, quickly, and demanded to be heard, over six months after I’d left the desert’s beautiful austerity for greener, more humid surrounds in the Deep South. But there, in the middle of the Alabama woods—having faced the unceremonious obliteration of each of my relocation plan’s carefully crafted stratagems—I’d answered the job offer with a mixture of seasoned caution and anticipation.

“I accept.”

***

Two weeks after I hung up with my new boss, I’d barreled past New Mexico’s welcome sign and murmured into my packed back seat where JoJo sat—peering out her crate at the wide open blue sky.

“Well, Little Bean, let’s try this again.”

I pulled into an abandoned gas station, peed into a bottle, and emptied it across the parched earth. Stretching, I lathered hand sanitizer across my dry, reddened knuckles and reached in for the coffee thermos I’d filled when I left Alabama, and pulled a long swig.

My eyes were heavy after leaving my friend’s driveway in Oklahoma—the night’s sleep continuously interrupted by rivulets of sweat trickling into my eyes; the summer’s heat and the cloistered air within the car had commingled to evidence the pandemic’s stifling grasp, overtly arresting society and planting deep within our collective consciousness the paranoia of imminent decay, the necessity of distance.

I stared across the reddish brown undulations—hints of sandy, rocky hills.

Am I really back?

Hours later, Albuquerque sprawled ahead, and the conflicting emotions of excitement and loss coursed through my veins as I passed the exit I’d taken to my ex’s home countless times before. Instead, I pulled into a weathered extended stay by the interstate, sidestepped a meth deal being made on the staircase, and introduced JoJo to our temporary lodging.

Thoroughly unimpressed, JoJo nestled within her blankets and fell asleep. After splashing water on my face, I acknowledged a bloody thumbprint just below the bathroom light fixture; as tired as I was, its presence hastened me out the door in search of an apartment.

Days later, I opened JoJo’s crate and watched her pitter patter across the apartment’s chipped, black-and-white checkered kitchen floor, before settling atop my foam mattress topper in the bedroom. Nary a stick of furniture to be had, I boiled water on the stove and cradled the steaming mug of instant coffee as I sat in the front doorway—my bare feet splayed across the cracked concrete porch floor, my mask dangling from an ear.

Wind purred through the railing—carrying with it a lens of sand that settled across the uneven, pocked surface and tickled my heels. Exhausted, I let my eyes wander across the barren front yard and the cool concrete—until they rested on a clump of dried leaves harbored within a dusty porch corner. And as the wind chided those discarded skins to flutter upended, I felt the brittle fragments of past lives—the strange and curious people I’d been—alight, cradle me, and propel me to chart another course: reminding me that each song need not be a ballad, every note a love story, one performance a triumph, that smattering of paint across canvas a masterpiece.

Creation can simply break the silence, heave me out from a monotonous rut—onto a different path not etched it stone, but freely forming and porous. Like the sand beneath my feet.

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Table for One

Flames writhed around dried roses and love notes, as four geese floated nearby—eyeing me, a stranger on the dock. Charred flakes fluttered as I tipped the last note toward a dying ember, and watched it slowly ignite—eating down through “l” and “love,” and begin licking “you.” Smoke rose, and I felt a coldness grow within me as I sat alone, broken, my legs swinging down near the placid water.

Nudging aside the matchbook and lighter fluid, I lifted the small pine bark pyre and pushed it into the water. It listed as fish pecked the bottom, testing the swamping mass and pulling down burnt petals. I wanted it to sink, needed it gone.

Stones from the bank served swift judgment as I hurled them, the tears pouring down my face; the geese took flight, honking—my own cheering squad. Amid splashes and cracks and sprays of water, most of it disappeared—the remaining fragments floating further away. 

Hours later, as I walked the pond’s edge and timidly scanned the surface for evidence, hoping for none, my eyes fell upon a saturated section lodged amid the weeds. I leered down and felt my heart jolt: edges burned and barely legible, the epistle’s “you” clung to the side.

Frantic, I grabbed a mossy cobble, lifted it like Rafiki did Simba, and thrust it down ferociously—damning the last tangible vestige of a cherished relationship to the deep.

The world felt so much smaller.

***

It was a different kind of mourning.

When I awoke the next morning, it felt as though a stone lay across my chest; heavy enough to shorten my breath, but not to suffocate me entirely, as I’d silently hoped. Up and down, up and down: it rose and fell rhythmically, as anger and fear and uncertainty boxed my heart.

I heaved, and dipped below the rumpled covers to greet the grief—to remind myself of the hard truth that it, too, was a gift.

Tears will saturate and drown, but will not make anything clean. Conscious breathing will not stem the feelings of suffocation. The emotional depths to which you dive, in wonder and pain, to process and extrapolate meaning while replaying the movie of the life you thought you’d share will never bring true resolution; magical thinking cannot conjure a happy ending. 

Absolutely nothing will change the debilitatingly sad reality that someone with whom you shared your whole vulnerable self is gone from your life—reminding you that, to love another fully, we each must love our perfectly imperfect selves unabashedly.

So, get up.

Set a mental table for one, toast the beautiful moments you shared—from which you learned and laughed and felt satisfyingly full. And while the pain of loss will still be there, lingering at the periphery—a jackal waiting to fall upon any scrap of emotional fortitude—you can stem it. You have the power to forgive incrementally, to shift from a space of anger and judgment and fear to one of care: for your present self, your future self—for the person whom you cherished and those you will cherish. 

Breathe out your horrible morning breath.

Get up.

And make yourself proud.

I kicked off the covers, exhaled, and let my soaked eyelids fall.

In my mind’s eye, I kept the charred paper scrap in the pond afloat a moment longer. And then, with gratitude, let it go—the ripples calming on the surface into a reflective pool, where I greeted my hardened face with an affirmation of my own.

I love you. 

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Brushing Up

Weaving through the roundabout, my Toyota’s front end wheezed and groaned—mechanical harbingers of exorbitant maintenance bills—the volume rising as I hit a pothole, jarring the nearly life-size wooden macaw from its perch on the backseat.

Moments earlier, I’d left a yard sale where the air was heavy with the aroma of freshly laid manure.

“Sorry about the smell!” the seller’s friend shouted as I exited the car, crinkling my nose.

“No worries,” I responded.

I’d actually just spread similar smelling compost around the bases of struggling plants in my garden, willing the nutrients to trickle down and enliven their withering bodies.

As I made my way into the yard, I noticed the seller was lifting crates packed with items out of her glutted garage. After perusing the first couple of items, I spied a tag from an antique mall I frequented, lifting it to read the item description.

“Oh, and don’t pay any attention to the prices on those tags,” she called, setting down a box. “They’re just for history. They’re not the prices.”

I later learned that her mother had a booth at the antique mall, and had recently died, leaving her daughter to purge the unsold items.

Judging from what I saw, I regretted not having more cash. But since it was the end of the month and I’d be left with just a couple of bucks in my bank account after rent was drafted, I reminded myself I didn’t need anything else—that this was just for fun. Residing in an area where the cost of living is constantly climbing, and where I barely make ends meet, my fun must be measured strictly in dollars and cents.

Eying a green-tinted bean pot, I lifted it up to confirm my suspicion; it was Frankoma. I considered asking how much it was, but refrained. For a few weeks I’d mulled over the idea of starting an little online shop, re-selling cheap yard sale finds like this one. But I was wary of amassing items and having them sit while I hashed out logistics for this potential, highly unprobable venture. It reminded me too much of my fifth grade get rich quick scheme: manufacturing necklaces made from perforated shells I’d hoarded from a trip to Destin, stringing them together with mint-flavored dental floss. I’d rationalized that the mint smell would make the necklaces seem more authentic and tropical. In the end, I only sold one for five dollars to a kid named Lee, and ended up with three massive buckets of shells bleaching in a corner of my room. My gums, however, were resplendent.

I lowered the pot back down onto the throw, and moved through the other items as another picker showed up.

Immediately, I recognized the woman would be a headache-inducing nightmare for the seller. Barely entering the thick of it, she lifted up a baby doll with a melted head and demanded to know how much. I quietly continued, watching her out of the corner of my eyes. Item by item, she slowly amassed a pile, including the Frankoma piece. I nodded over to her as she picked it up, mentioning that it was a good score and throwing in a bit of history about Frankoma.

After that, she asked me about every single item she considered, prefacing each inquiry with some derivation of, “Since you seem to know a hell of a lot about this stuff…” During a lull in the questioning, the seller confided to me, “Yeah, I should probably eBay a lot of this stuff. But I just want it gone, you know? It’s an energy thing.” Her tone fading to a whisper, her eyes watering as she turned away.

I nodded and said I completely understood. Whenever I make a decision to shed something, I want it gone immediately; I quickly grow to loathe and resent the space it occupies.

A few other folks pulled up, and I wound my way back to the few things I assumed I could afford with the couple of bucks I had in my pocket—the macaw, and a thin artist’s palette. Since the macaw was on a stake, I intended to use it as a plant anchor. Three dollars later, I walked them back to my car, the sound of the bargain hunter’s booming voice drifting after me.

***

As I reached into the backseat with my free arm to shift the macaw back into place, I spied a plastic chair coming into view on my right-hand side. Closer, I noticed a paper sign reading “Fun stuff for sale” duct-taped to it, a sloppily painted red arrow pointing down a narrow alley.

I glanced down the shadowy lane as I passed, but didn’t see anything remotely resembling fun. But as I crept up to the end of the block, I circled back down the other side, determining where the alley ended and if I could see anything from a different angle. Still nothing. I circled the block again, debating whether or not to venture down the alley, before deciding to park.

As I passed the chair and followed the arrow, I told myself that I wouldn’t be entirely surprised if I came upon a naked man swirling a cracked wine glass and wearing a furry horse head with “fun stuff” painted in dripping red across his hairy, mole-covered, protruding gut.

About twenty feet down, a small driveway opened up to one side, and I noticed various items strewn across a few tables and broken fishing poles propped against a fence. I didn’t see an attendant until I was fully in the backyard.

The middle-aged man was shirtless, wearing a faded hat turned backwards. As he turned at my approach, I noticed he had plumber’s crack, and patches of thick upper arm hair.

I mumbled a greeting and quickly pored over the items, recognizing immediately that there was nothing I wanted. But he kept getting closer, making the situation all the more awkward. I felt slightly hemmed in, my southern politeness chiding, “Be respectful and give this shit another once over,” while my intuition screamed, “WHAT ARE YOU DOING IN AN ALLEY WITH A STRANGER? RUN!”

“Clearing things out, huh?” I said, forcing a casual tone.

“YEP YOU KNOW JUST TRYING TO MAKE ROOM FOR HER STUFF,” he boomed, motioning to a chair barely visible around the corner, presumably occupied by some unseen figure. Mother perhaps.

The way he spoke suggested an urgency to everything.

Rusted tools and tarnished silver covered one table, with a few boxes beneath housing moldy Judy Blume books, and a disturbingly old tome simply titled The Human Body—the figure on the front skinless, with exposed sinews and bulging eyeballs.

He noticed me reviewing the books, and shuffled even closer, his sagging bellybutton nearly level with my ear.

NO ONE BUYS BOOKS ANYMORE. THEY’RE ALL PLUGGED INTO THEIR PHONES AND THOSE THINGS YA KNOW?”

He made a winding motion around his ear. I nodded and said it hurt my heart that books weren’t being read as much, even though I’d just read an article about how Millennials are opting for print books over audio or e-versions. But this was all about placation.

When he turned away, I used the opportunity to put a little more distance between us, and reviewed which items could possibly be of use. I was desperate for a diamond in the rough—something that I could snag with the two dollars I had in my wallet.

“What about the extension cord?”

“AH THAT’S FIFTEEN DOLLARS.”

I tried not to laugh in his face. Judging from the taped up sections, anyone who used it would probably be electrocuted the moment the prongs touched an outlet. I inched away from it, but he moved quickly, sidling up next to me, forcing me back toward it.

“YOU KNOW WHAT THIS IS DON’TCHA?”

What you tie your victims up with?

I looked on vacantly, screaming inwardly.

“IT’S A HUNDRED FOOTER!”

“Oh, wow.”

Quickly, I pivoted to an adjacent table and rummaged through a pile of dull files, and considered how many bodies the rusted saw next to them had dismembered.

A faded yellow radio on a nearby table began playing a song with incredibly explicit lyrics, and I tried to inwardly hum something uplifting.

“THIS IS SUPPOSED TO BE THE HALLELUJAH STATION!”

He ran over to the radio and turned the song down, muttering about the obscenities before returning to the shaded corner and mumbling in the chair’s direction.

If I ran now, I’d probably at least make it out of the alley, and then I could hit my car’s panic button before he pulled me back into the alley’s dark reaches, back to Mother.

I turned and stepped on a piece of gravel, which crunched loudly and ground beneath my Birkenstocks. He redirected his attention from the radio to me, and began charging back. To deflect whatever commentary—or knife thrust—he had ready, I grabbed the closest thing and asked about the price.

What about this brush?

Its wire teeth were bent, misshapen, and rusty, and its plastic body scuffed and cracked. It was garbage, and I hoped it was less than three dollars.

“UM YEAH THAT’S TWO DOLLARS.”

Hallelujah!

“Great, um, I’ll use it for my grill.”

I didn’t have a grill.

“OH MAN I DIDN’T EVEN THINK ABOUT THAT AND I JUST BOUGHT A GRILL CLEANER.”

He ran over to a pile of tools propped against a rotting shed, as if to prove its existence.

“WHEN THE HANDLE BROKE OFF OF THAT I JUST SAID FUCK IT.”

I pondered how he’d broken the handle—most likely forcing his latest victim into a bath, scrubbing dirty, filthy hair from their supple skin, chiding in a sing-song voice that Mother demanded a clean canvas.

So not only was I buying a garbage brush, but one that was broken to boot. I eyed the hole in the center of the plastic body where the handle had broken off, doing my best to avert his steely gaze.

“Well, this will do it!” I shouted, extending my crumpled two dollars.

“OK GREAT.”

He grabbed them with his roughened hands and shoved them into his pocket.

I turned and darted away, walking quickly to the street—all the while waiting for his hairy arm to pull me back, a chloroform-soaked rag pressed to my face, the brush falling out of my limp hand onto the alleyway, like the pearls from Bruce Wayne’s mother in the original Batman.

Sunlight glanced across my face as I skittered past the “fun stuff” sign and jumped into my car, pressing the accelerator.

***

JoJo twirled and barked at the macaw as I planted it in the center of my elephant ear plant’s pot, taking care to tie the most unstable stalks to the stake. I wiped the macaw down with a damp cloth and stepped back, smiling at the bright, chipping paint—wondering about where it came from, the stories it carried.

Macaw-fully good decor

I tossed the wire brush into a bin of home improvement tools, and laughed to myself at the absurdity of the whole exchange and that, in retrospect, it wasn’t the wisest move. I wondered if he’d sold anything else.

The infamous brush

Heading out to my garden, I grabbed a bowl I’d snagged at an estate sale months before. Its roughened glaze and off-kilter shape had struck me, and I imagined the potter who’d made it, who’d scrawled their name into the base. In the other hand, I toted my partially filled kettle, and planned to use the leftover water from the morning’s tea to refill the bird bath.

Rounding the corner, I stopped suddenly. Harriet, my resident Northern Harrier hawk, stood squarely in the middle of the bird bath, cleaning her beak in the little water that remained. The wind ruffled her plumage and she shook droplets all over herself. Within moments, she took flight, fracturing small twigs in the trees above, sending squirrels darting in all directions, barking frantically at her ascent. I waited for a moment, and then filled the concrete bath—a lone puff of down floating on top of the glassy pool.

Pod by pod, I plucked peas from their wispy stalks, tossing them into the bowl atop romaine leaves. I nudged baby cucumbers and eggplants and strawberries slowly budding on their vines, willing them to bulk up—to make the end of the month seem a little less wanting.

With my bowl full, I turned to head inside, and smiled at the streak of pink emblazoned across the gray sky; a beautiful farewell to another day gone.

Inside, I cut up everything and made a salad, positioning myself with it in front of one of my fans along the sun porch’s window bank. The heat was subsiding, but the cool air was a necessary, enlivening jolt; I still had things to do—writing to complete, art projects to start.

But I just stared out at the green, watching the light fade from the sky, trying to remind myself that I have to stop racing around from project to project lest I miss the beauty of quietly simple moments. There’s a certain fullness to my life that comes from embracing the world on a very basic level, of recognizing that I’m one tiny cog in a vast, pulsing world of bizarre creatures—tormented, suffering, vulnerable, jubilant.

As I do every night before I lay down to sleep, I reminded myself how fortunate I’ve been to have the opportunity to bring some of my goals to fruition, and to keep working toward others, especially now—when so many have so little, and our country is descending further into darkness. I usually murmur this to myself while looking at a glass jar I mended as a high schooler—aspiring to be an archaeologist, which I was able to be for nearly a decade—which contains fortunes from long since crumbled cookies.

Mended fortunes

It always reminds me that, though each of us may feel like a distinct, lonely shard in a fractured mirror, only by mending ourselves into a stronger whole will we be able to protect the future we know is within reach, that’s worth the fight.

***

Embedded in the most mundane moments of a given day, there’re stories of how we’ve swept the suffocating cobwebs off our weathered pasts, refreshing them with a coat of paint—liberally brushing on vibrancy and radiance, reflecting the color we know our lives can bring. But the only way of adding them to the blindingly fantastic kaleidoscope of humanity is by sharing them—reminding one another that we’re not alone.

That each of us has the power to bridge the gap between calamity and creation—sparking beauty, love, and connection, the promise that permeates every atom around us.

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Oh, Canada!

For approximately three minutes, I reveled in the low cost of Joanna’s first boarding experience. But then the intake technician returned from the back and said that the doctor would like to chat with me about JoJo’s stay, adding quickly that everything was fine. After retrieving the lil bean and hearing about her explosive diarrhea and vomiting that morning– and watching my bill double from her antibiotics and an injection–I scooped her up and took her home.

Following two unsuccessful attempts at hiding her antibiotic in treats, I finally smeared enough of the smelly prescribed food over the pill for her to stomach it. Seated at the kitchen table, I barely reached my tea before she jumped up and burrowed into the knitted blanket covering my lap.

As I felt her little body rise and fall under the blanket and scratched between her ears, she poked her head out, looked up lovingly, and waited until we were nose-to-nose to burp in my face. A few minutes later, I had to surrender all motion as her series of snores grew louder, an occasional fart interjected for good measure.

Outside, the cloud-cluttered sky did its best to obscure the fragments of bright blue behind them. The heater clicked on, and I let the steam from my tea writhe up under my glasses, fogging them slightly. On the last day of my vacation, I looked forward to nothing more than a quiet day at home. I hadn’t had a true vacation since my honeymoon, and I’d forgotten how cathartic it could be. Albeit just a few days in Canada, this mini-vacation was just what I’d needed.

***

As I stood about 250 feet in the air, the Capilano Suspension Bridge began swaying from the tourists herding onto it like fleets of cattle. I clutched the thick cable railings and figured that I’d plunge to my death screaming, “I KNEW THIS WOULD HAPPEN!”

Capilano Bridge. It's only slightly (terrifyingly) high.
Capilano Bridge. It’s only slightly (terrifyingly) high.

I’ve never been comfortable with heights, but my friends had been very persuasive in selling this particular excursion. Despite my expectation of a horrific death by falling, I took heart in knowing that, at the very least, on my way down I’d have a great view of the beautiful scenery.

Ah, the cathartic sounds of a waterfall.
Ah, the cathartic sounds of a waterfall.

After traipsing across tree house-style catwalks and chatting about the sexual promiscuity of middle-schoolers, we scampered along a few more cantilevered walkways. Soon enough, we were in the gift shop, and I capitalized on my adrenaline rush by consuming a hearty supply of fudge.

Like the evening before, that night’s dinner was filled with laughter and conversation, and more than a few drinks. Feeling heady from all the booze, I happened to look over at a nearby table where a bromance was unfolding with every pint they knocked back. The more vocal one put his arm around his girlfriend’s shoulders, but didn’t break his gaze from watching his single friend’s Adam’s apple rock up and down with every gulp. After they returned from one of their multiple bathroom visits together, I happened to catch the eye of the single guy. The “family” resemblance was instant—as it often is—and his gaze quickly ricocheted off of me to settle on my friend seated beside me. Had this happened a decade ago, I’d have quietly cried into my cocktail. Instead, I chuckled to myself and tipped my glass ever so slightly in his direction before whispering to my friend that he had an admirer.

Self-acceptance isn’t an easy thing—but with the past year’s revelations, I’ve found that having a sense of humor is vitally important in propelling me forward. I don’t know what’ll unfold in the coming years, or where I’ll be or with whom—if anyone—but no matter what, I intend to keep on laughing.

***

On the ride back home, I melted into a playlist of Radiohead and David Bowie and Brandi Carlile, and absorbed the passing landscapes—letting the welcomed sun warm my arms and face.

About an hour outside of Seattle, the sky darkened and hail began raining down. I slowed and watched a few cars pull off under bridge overpasses. Instead of joining them, I putted along and kept myself focused on the brightening road ahead. Before long, sun enveloped the car and Seattle’s skyline came into view.

Sitting at traffic lights, I rolled around sea glass collected from Stanley Park’s shorelines, feeling the worn surfaces abrading my palms; tossed and turned through tumultuous currents, their jagged edges had softened into something timeless.

I felt revived—like I had the necessary confidence and fortitude to push ahead. Like the beginning of a love story, not every vacation needs to be a lengthy sonnet. Sometimes, a haiku will capture it all.

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Instead, I Smiled

The carpet contoured to my face, and I felt safe. When I closed my eyes, I flirted with sleep, and could feel the weighted liquor coursing through me, lulling me into pliable submission.

I couldn’t see the television, but registered the talking heads crowing about the latest dresses and stars studding the red carpet as the Oscars got underway. Behind me, my friends continued to carouse and sip their drinks.

Until that night, I hadn’t felt like I was part of a group, much less a welcomed addition to any social clique. With them, I started to experience something that’d been lacking for most of my life: a sense of community. Alongside these guys, I felt like I could handle being gay.

***

Grant, the host, was my first crush, and I dared to think that I loved him. He had a biting wit and sarcastic sense of humor. And unlike me, he was confident. I’d fashioned an orbit around him throughout my senior year of college; but like a distant star, I always hovered on his periphery and he never pulled me in. Still, I admired him for all the qualities I failed to see in myself.

Someone refilled his cup with cheap vodka on the coffee table nearby, and the loudest of my friends brayed about giving massages, and asked if anyone wanted one. Drunkenly, I raised my hand from the floor. I was a freshly fledged gay, and I craved being seen, and I longed to be desired—and while I wasn’t sporting a six-pack or chiseled jaw, I’d worked off enough of my baby fat to pass as cute.

Due in part to a few botched make out moments courtesy of the Myspace meat market, I’d never been remotely intimate with another gay man. The simple act of being touched seemed foreign and exotic; and I wanted nothing more. And while I wasn’t attracted to my ad hoc masseur, the mere fact that a gay man was touching me felt thrilling.

Soon enough, my shirt proved to be an impediment, and I removed it at his prompting. The spindly carpet fibers burrowed into my torso, and I continued to melt into them, and tried to enjoy the moment. A few minutes after I’d balled up my shirt, the only couple there whispered conspiratorially to one another. I hadn’t paid much attention to them, but I noticed a distinct change in the room’s atmosphere. The television boomed louder, and I wondered where Grant had gone; I hadn’t heard him speak since my back massage started. I even thought that he might’ve been jealous, and I felt some semblance of flirtatious power over him.

After a little while, the massage stopped, and my friend got a drink and started chatting with Grant in the kitchen. I continued to lay there and let random thoughts dance through my head as I closed my eyes. That’s when I felt someone’s hand caressing my side; I was incredibly ticklish and I flinched a bit, chuckling as I did. It was one of Grant’s other friends—a member of the couple—and he’d framed himself closely over me, with his other hand pressed into the carpet near my head. I began to feel claustrophobic, and started to say something when he shoved his hand down the front of my jeans, grunting as he did, his breath curling inside my ear and melding with the lowered voices of the others.

“I want to know what you got,” he’d croaked, his liquored breath burning against my cheek.

My thoughts raced as I realized my dazed attempts to stop him were actually emboldening him. He pushed and prodded, his nails scratching into me as he strained against my freed, flailing hand toward my groin. He pushed his body closer, and muttered to his boyfriend.

“He’s trying to fucking cockblock me.”

When he reached my penis, I went numb. It was momentary and jarring, and he’d done it: his violation was complete. Whether he’d satisfied his curiosity, or I’d managed to catch him off guard, I was able to push his hand off my shaft; my skin crawled as his fingers raked through my pubic hair. He got up and melted into the background with Grant and the masseur. Frozen with terror, I stayed on the floor, watching the impression from his hand slowly disappear as the carpet rebounded.

Minutes later, Grant gathered me up, and put me to bed in his back room. The next morning, everyone except Grant was gone. He wished me a good morning, and asked how I’d slept. I stared at him expectantly, but I could tell a veil of complicity was pulled tautly over his mouth. I felt a scream pounding at the back of my teeth, begging to be freed. But instead, I smiled.

******

It took me 12 years to put a name to what’d happened to me. I never told anyone about it–not my family, closest friends, or my ex-husband.

I hadn’t really expected acknowledging it to be quite so freeing; and in many ways, the catharsis I felt when I actually told my therapist was so painfully potent, that I wondered how the weight of it had contorted and morphed over the years to become so bearable.

There’s nothing normal about sexual assault, and no part of it should be normalized. In these tumultuous times, so much hate and violence is being threaded into our daily lives that it’s easy to let it transform into something else–something that can be shouldered. But it shouldn’t be. It’s toxic and debilitating, and it only serves to empower the perpetrators.

And as hard as it is sometimes to speak out, the uncompromising truth is our most damaging weapon–even in times when fearmongers try to make truth as malleable as clay, when we have a sexual predator at this country’s helm.

The truth does indeed set one free. And I intend to speak mine boldly, loudly, and fully–to break through the hypocrites’ tired reframes of alternative facts.

To thread more understanding, compassion, and empathy into our beleaguered national narrative. And remind others who are scared and vulnerable that they are not alone.

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When the Clock Strikes 13

Freshly painted foamcore protest signs dry on the weathered kitchen table.

By now, I’d hoped some fragments of the innumerable magical thoughts bounding around in my head would’ve come to fruition – that I’d awaken fully rested for the first time since November, letting the knowledge that it was all a horrific nightmare fade into mental ether.

Even still, in the quiet of the night, I hope for some sort of salvation. But I know the fight back from this is up to us. Only when the people find their voices will we actually effect change. I hope that that fire grows in intensity through tomorrow and boils over in cities across the country on Saturday. I don’t hope for violence, but I do hope for discomfort – in the ways that mass organizing and large-scale protests can bring things to a crashing halt. Because only when our comfortable routines are interrupted do we actually take notice. Which is exactly what brought us to this point. We had a great past 8 years, but many of us got complacent; and that’s when the monsters crept in.

So tomorrow, I’ll most likely be in the street – alongside countless others – protesting this dawning horror.

But I’ll also be recommitting my efforts to elevating the voices of the people who are often left behind; to channeling and reflecting compassion and empathy, and leveraging my privileges for others; and speaking out and standing against oppressive rhetoric and actions.

And when I get on my bus to go home, I’ll quietly commit to living my life as fully and authentically as possible – because that is the greatest form of resistance.

Tomorrow, when the clock strikes 13, the nation will not cease to be. But a dark veil will be cast over it. And it is up to us to lift it, bit by bit, to let the light back in.

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Moonlighting

Half moons carry with them something sinister. Beyond the kitchen window, the yard is silent, wrapped in a shawl of darkness – slats of moonlight fracturing through the mossy branches of the plum tree.

The meteor is just about to destroy Earth; Keira Knightley sniffles, staring glassy-eyed at Steve Carell.

“Somehow, I thought we could save one another.”

The living room fills with light from the screen; the world is gone. And the painfully apropos soundtrack cools my blood.

This is the stage of crushing realization – when the recent past seems like ancient history, and the lonesome present is an alternate reality.

I can feel the tremors rippling behind my eyes, the pulsating inhalations as my nostrils flare. The deluge is instant and heavy. And there’s no one to hear me. So I let my labored sobs fill the cottage, absorb into the walls, and filter through the cracked floors and drafty windows.

In this moment, I am fully alone – vis-à-vis with the weighted knowledge that my life is forever changed.

The sofa’s worn leather stretches under me as I rock back and forth. Joanna scuttles over, burrowing her head under my arms – licking at the salty delicacies pouring from my eyes. She’s confused, and so am I.

Behind every laugh, every tear, there’s a blend of uncertainty and loss, longing and fulfillment, despair and fortitude.

Sometimes, my thoughts get away from me and riddle idle conversation with unnecessary bleakness; I don’t really know how I’m feeling until I start talking, determining if the wavering in my voice will subside or snowball into a tumbling mess.

Even still, despite being physically deflated, I’ve never felt as emotionally full.

Now, I let myself feel the jagged edges of ugly, dark moments, and absorb the humbling, beautiful ones – all generating the momentum I need to get through a day, to pay a kindness forward. To put more good out into the world than bad – to place a dollar in an outstretched cup, to acknowledge someone who feels forgotten, to laugh at a bad joke, to dodge a snail sliming across the sidewalk; to lift up, not bear down.

***

Hot cocoa steams from my Pyrex mug as the cottage rattles from the thunderous percussion of massive metallic sheets clattering out of the steel mill downhill.

Car headlights stream along the bridge in the distance, the traffic more visible as the branches shed their burdensome foliage.

The dryer buzzes and I shuffle over, throwing open the door to amass the warm sheets.

Heated air pulses through the tiny laundry room and unmoors a large dandelion seed from a nearby succulent’s dried soil. I watch it dance and shiver mid-air, spiraling and somersaulting.

I cup my hands around it as it begins to fall, and push open a window. Slowly, delicately, I open my hands, but the cool air whips it from me with little fanfare, casting it above the trees.

I think about reaching after it, but resist.

I track its ascent, watching its feathery pappus blanch in the moonlight as it vanishes from view into the inky night.

To root and grow beyond anyone’s grasp.