Day 818, September 28, 2022

-

The Longing Days

It is the season of wearing dogs on one’s lap for warmth. 
It is the time of errant fire alarms in the middle of the night.
It is the time of riding a bicycle home in the dark.

A couple of freestanding turkeys proclaimed
the side of the road as a place to mill about.

I am still wary about reading the news too closely.
Protect one’s self by only consuming headlines
and first paragraphs.

My fortune reads,
Belief is nothing,
believe in something.

Did you know that on the third day,
the remaining chili becomes a sacred thing?

I was expecting a greeting,
something other than a concentrated frown.
But, I will take what I can get.

The joy of sitting beside my son
and hearing him laugh, 
the two day old guacamole,
a little gray all around,
a glass of juice that tastes only a little
like drinking someone’s sweat.

This is what longing
tastes like.



Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Day 1003, March 13, 2023

-
Image
A little more than a thousand days… I have been thinking about how memories do not become stories until you write them down, or perhaps recite them over dinner and a drink, or sing them in song. Until then, they are just temporal wisps of existence, like the day before yesterday, or the meal you shared ten years ago at the restaurant where you still always order the same thing.The peanut noodle salad sprinkled liberally with scallions and undercooked broccoli. It would be just a meal if not for the retelling and revisiting.  I missed the 1000th day, choosing instead to celebrate the birth of two of my children (twins), and then after over filling myself with bulgogi, pajun, and bibimbap, settled into dozing off in front of the television.  I remember becoming a father like those stories you read about where mothers pick up small cars to save children pinned underneath (there is nothing written about what kind of negligence caused a child to be pinned under a small automobile). The kids
Read more

Day 999, March 9, 2023

-
Image
Look to the Stars There is still the beating heart.  The weary day is not so terrible,  it is just soft and pliant  like the sugar wrapped around a big industrial sized taffy machine.  Sometimes it is hard to tell what will make one  day worth more than another.  A few minutes of imagining an old lady  in a nursing home  meeting her lover for breakfast in the cafeteria.  Producing something that did not exist before.  A chicken’s morning nonchalance.  The scallion stems sitting in a jar of water.  Even with the evidence,  it is all too easy to forget and treat the day  as a thing dreary  and consumed like a bowl of raw sunflower seeds.  A vocal coach will hold sessions with the stars  in their hotel room.  Someone to remind one how incredible this life is.  All your life  you have dreamed of this moment.  And now you are here.  Sometimes we forget that. 
Read more

Day 998, March 8, 2023

-
Image
 Simile Sometimes there is quiet for many days,  there is no more room in the voicemail,  the fortune cookies remain uneaten,  the ears chirp with fields of crickets.  A dog is licking his bone,  occasionally jawing the hock,  but mostly licking.  The fire is an even glow,  not too hot, not too cold,  it is like the log has turned to charcoal  and there is a nice even burning,  proper and genteel flames,  not reckless and unruly  like in the morning with the vent open.  Some days it feels like someone  has served a large plate of banana pudding  and I do not like banana pudding  or damp vanilla wafers  and so the day becomes like riding an escalator  when you have a headache.  A long escalator,  like in the subway in DC.  The stop near the zoo and the conference hotel.  It is a terrible thing to have the stomach flu  while staying in a hostel.  When the kids were little  and we went on a whale watching trip,  but the seas were rough on the way back,  and I had never been seasick before
Read more