here is a fact, here is a metaphor.

I haven't written lately and I don't know if that's because I have nothing to say, too much to say, or I've forgotten. Maybe I'm losing it, I think. Maybe I can't write anymore. I'm trying to feel okay about feeling everything and not knowing how to describe or explain just what that looks like. I went for a run this morning and the path was deserted except for me and two rabbits and a squirrel. The air smelled murky and like mulch and forgotten things. Already the leaves are turning. Already the trees are changing. Already we are letting go.

I speak in metaphor because it's easier than nailing down the facts. Metaphor is fluid, changeable, easily misunderstood. A way to say what you intend without explanation. Facts are unchangeable, often misinterpreted but they are not soluble things. Here is a fact: I am alive. Here is a metaphor: I don't know what that means.

My homeopath put me on a strict regime of eating habits, including 3 cups of steamed greens a day, protein each meal, something called potato peel broth I'm supposed to make from the skins of six potatoes and a carrot, and over a hundred dollars worth of supplements. That's the give, here's the take: I've had no sugar, no wheat, no dairy, no coffee, no nuts, since last week Wednesday. I feel much better. This is a fact, however inconvenient it may be. The first four days the drugs, namely sugar and caffeine, worked their way out of my system. I took a nap everyday until Saturday, something I only do if I'm exhausted. In this case, I couldn't keep my eyes open. I'm awake now.

What we feed on feeds us, in true nature. Good begets good, bad begets bad. Yesterday I craved kale until I ate a whole bunch, sautéed slowly with coconut oil and lemon, salt and pepper. Sometimes I eat it with ginger. That was the turning point, I think. I've lost weight in five days, unintentionally and what at first felt unexplainably. The quality, the content, what it does for not just our souls but our bodies, matters. This reminds me in all areas of my life to feed myself well.
Here is another fact: food is a drug. Here is another metaphor: I'm coming off my own highs. Do you see what I mean about the difference between fact and metaphor? One is explainable, understandable, the other is reaching. After my parents separated, I vacillated between feeling everything until I feared I would choke, or feeling nothing until I feared I would drown. My solution was to eat, to watch movies, to go online and talk to people and not feel so alone. I gained weight and a knowledge of pop trivia, but the sadness did not go away.

On my run, I thought, she is a woman whom sadness made rest, but she is not empty. Maybe I'll write on that, maybe there's a story there, maybe it's just for me. I saved the words, repeating them over and over until I could write that down. Maybe sadness comes to sit with all of us. Maybe the only way to move forward is to not begrudge her, not ignore her, not scold her, but treat her with gentleness and compassion.

This week is the first week in about a month I haven't had nightmares. I woke up yesterday and realized my dreams did not scare me. There was no mist hanging around my head like a dark shroud I could not take off. I felt relieved enough to fall asleep again. Maybe this is from eating better, or from scraping off stress (an effective method, though not the safest), or from simply moving towards peace. All I know is I'm not afraid to sleep anymore. I'm not afraid of food anymore. I'm not afraid of my body, of the way it curves and aches and needs.

What does not sustain, propel towards growth, fill, cut it out, trim the fat, sweep out the old. Sugar feeds me, but does not sustain me. Flattery feeds me, but does not sustain me. Hatred and shame of myself neither feeds or sustains but instead grows like a weed. Cut it out, trim off the fat. Maybe that's where the nightmares went, alongside with the self-loathing and shame, they packed their bags and left permanently.

Another fact: I am a writer. Another metaphor: I wish I could tell you where my heart goes when my chest shakes.

the times are changing.

This is a strange age.

Of death, of dying, oneself, and relationships, and yes, even lives. What mournful morning is not tinged with grief. Rhetorical questions aside, I wonder, where was all this when we were young? I know it was there. I was lucky and escaped most brushes with death. My great grandma Dumpling, named after the meals she made with her steady Czech hands, died a few weeks short of 102. I remember thinking she was almost there, she had almost made it. At that age though, death is not a foe but a friend. I know she was tired. I know she was forgetting. I know she wanted to run again. I never asked her, but I feel like she was We cried. No matter what age, it's unsettling seeing adults, your grandparents, your parents, weep. Snotty noses and reddened faces and swollen eyes are unfamiliar on family members, almost a shock, a reminder we are all little children underneath our age and groaning bones. I sat listening to words family and friends said, a room of people who will never be the same and will never sit under the same walls again, and wished I had a memory to add. I might have said something about the red glass candleholder she let us touch. I was like that, eager to please, but confused at my own turmoil. I cried and didn't recognize the face in the casket. Casket is a cold word that sounds like a door opening and closing with a bang, an east wind blowing a screen door shut. I still have her red candle.

With all coins, there is good alongside the bad, though sometimes an ending is not altogether horrific, just sad. Moving to Seattle is not terrifying, but bittersweet. I am ready to run again. Maybe I will fall in love, this is my thought process. I'm trying to shape it into, maybe I will fall in love with a place, with a project, with a community, with a passion, and not put so much emphasis on relationships. Being surrounded doesn't make this simpler, although I am happier. My friends are married, or falling in love, and there are babies. Babies I've held, babies in tummies, babies just a thought. We are babies. Every generation says as they beget the next. When will we say, we were babies? That's the true test. But back to babies. I don't understand how my friends, are the ones with these children. They don't remind me of any parent I know. Do we grow up into being parents? Do we stay young and stay old simultaneously?

I went to a dinner party at a sweet couple's home while in Seattle. First time meeting them after years of knowing them online, which makes the first happenstance nerve wracking. Will they like me, will we get along? They couldn't have been lovelier. She was pregnant, still a few months until birth. They named their baby Evelyn Wilde, if you want to know. That's a weighty name for a precious soul and with her parents, she will carry it well. He is a gentle giant with a voice to match, she a woman who looks like she'll be a mother her children will sing songs about. They served us gluten free pizza, a spinach and feta one, and a sausage and tomato one. Both were delicious. We talked about film cameras and the industry, their family and their vision for their lives, and silly things. Icebreaker things that became funnier the more we talked, until we were laughing. Soon we'll have wine at these dinners. I sat there in my chair and gave Lillian a look, she smiled and I felt as if she understood.

Later, when we walked back to the dorm, I said, I was sitting there thinking, we're the ones having people over for dinner, not our parents, and we're the ones talking about babies and relationships, we're the ones who are engaged and married and having babies, and we're the ones doing -- this! She smiled again. I kept running over the thought in my mind like a small splinter in your thumb. Not unpleasant, but unfamiliar. How long until this feeling will be a memory, too?

come away with me.

Here's what will happen:

You will come home. Dad will be washing dishes. Sinatra will be playing, or some big band. The door will open and the kids will run forward, yelling mom, surrounding you until you drop your bags. You will not be tired. You will laugh. Dad will say, we missed you. You will hug him. You will have a treat for him, a small gift for all of us. Dad will have made spaghetti. There will be a plate set for you and your noodles won't be cold. We will all sit on the couch by you as you tell us about your trip. Dad will look at you like he has the world and you will return his gaze. Maybe that evening, we will watch a movie. How about that? We will have icecream from the freezer and we will each have a large bowl. Maybe you will ask for seconds. Dad will make bacon cheese potato skins and we will each get two. We will watch Lord of the Rings, because we only watched it with you once, mom. We will watch the third one, out of order for you, because we know how much you like the scene where they light the beacons. You remember that? Of course you do. Once when you were gone, we watched The Return of the King in Chloe and my room with grandpa, grandma, Laura, and Dad. We put it on the projector and it lit up the wall with Gondor. When we got to that scene, dad mentioned how much you loved it. I got chills and that dim space felt like heaven. I haven't forgotten, you know. We will watch that movie and you will sit by dad and when it gets to the part with Shelob, you will cover your face with a pillow and he will tell you when it's over.

Okay? That's not so much to ask, is it?

God, momma, I miss you.

what will your verse be?

Oh Captain, my Captain.

Robin Williams is dead. I don't know where I'm going with this. I only know I need to write in the most primal sense of the word need. Oh God. My heart hangs heavier and heavier each day. Philip Seymour Hoffman's death was another stone on my back, Robin William's is a boulder. I don't know why this is affecting me this hard. Only that I know the taste of grief and I can never get it out of my mouth. I'm running from it but my feet know the path too well. I'm overrun, overcome, attacked at all sides.

Beheadings, divorce, war, death, grief grief grief running like a river in our hands and we can't staunch the flow. Robin Williams is dead. I cannot wrap my head around this. He had children who loved him, children not his own. He was a very human human, if that makes any sense at all. Someone on my twitter stream wrote, sometimes people use humor to hide their very deep sadness. A gradual gutting. Isn't that true? How horrible it is that this is many realities, many lives. We all cary a deep sadness, like a seed growing and twisting through our veins, inside us.

Now that I'm writing, I don't know what to say. I'll stumble through this post for awhile. Here's what I wish I could do: I wish I could gather together with the world and whisper, I know. I wish I could mourn together. Brandon of Humans of New York posted an image of four women sitting together with a captain saying, we have come to sit with her in her sadness. This is what we need. Sometimes, there is no fixing. That is, there is no fast way to feel better. It's a slow journey, an arduous trek we undertake with the help of those walking alongside us. The surest way to fall back and decide you're through is to walk alone.

I am so tired of pain. I am so tired of grief. I am so tired of seeing brokenness in people's eyes like it's normal everyday life. This dichotomy of weeping and laughing wears me thin. I want to dance, but I can only keen like a mourner. This is my life now and with every day that passes, I don another veil. I don't know many things about life, but I know that we spiral through pain and our pain is like a ring we carry inside us. We are layered.

I know the darkness of depression, I know the haze of sadness thick and smothering like old blankets in small closets with only blackness for a light. I know that sometimes reaching out to open the door takes more energy than we have. Please, I pray, keep reaching.

I don't understand, I don't understand. Not knowing is harder in these moments. I grasp at any straw, any light I can hold and I hoard it like a starved dog cradles a bone, to the chest. Though we deal with a very present darkness, we are never alone. We are not without hope. Rest in peace, Robin Williams. Rest in peace, oh broken world. Let light reign, let light in. Jesus, come come come.

remembering.

After your parents divorce, is it still okay to talk about funny, normal things?

For example: my parents both took Italian in college.

On the way up to the lake, we pulled into a parking lot of a church by our house to secure the canoe on the suburban. My dad took a picture and my mother said, don't take the picture until I pull my pants down. She almost fell over laughing. My grandpa and dad exchanged eyes and laughed and I laughed until I cried. We reminded her of it the entire vacation. We make too light of these instances, dismissing them as the butter when they are really the bread.

Mom's mispronunciations of Krusteaz pancakes at Christmas time. The bag of pistachios grandma always gave dad. A new skillet one year when the tree was in the living room, all white on the floor and the walls.

Mom always bought a special treat for my father on the way home from Costco. He always gave her flowers on their anniversary.

One year they went to Fitgers up in Duluth with my baby brother Brennan, and they came home with a stuffed moose.

When Chloe and I were old enough to watch The Lord of the Rings, we spent several weeks watching the trilogy with mom and dad. We watched all the credits on the last movie, a tradition I continue. We stayed up late looking up our Elvish and Hobbit names online.

My mother was embarrassed with public displays of affection, even if public meant our living room.

Who will get the car bed? We asked, and mom said, it will stay at grandma and grandpa Martin's. When there was still going to be a grandma and grandpa Martin's.

My mother took photos of my grandpa eating on our trip to California. My dad loved it. There's a photo of the two of them eating icecream when they were dating and it's still on my grandpa's easel.

In an apartment I shouldn't remember because I was too little, we turned on the tall, sleek black lamp and the light in the room was a warm, rich yellow in the twilight. My mother turned up Tears for Fears or Christian rock of the late 90's and we danced to it. All of us.

Silly things like that. The things that matter most. I'm forgetting them and it terrifies me. How can I say these things and then announce, they're divorced now. Where is the line? What's appropriate and inappropriate and who gets to decide? How do I speak about my history when the present is divided? It would be easier to erase my roots versus go through the pain of replanting. Trees carry their memories in rings and each line is a circle of sorrow, of hallelujah. I daresay after grief, there will be no joy that does not carry with it a remembered sorrow.

'Cause you're shivering cold.

Once we watched August Rush past midnight with mom and dad. Chloe and I. We laid blankets on the floor and stayed up late. Eleven was late. I had to babysit the next morning. I don't know if I should stay up this late, I said to mom and dad. We understand, they said, but they encouraged me to watch anyways. It's not that late, they said. How many nights like this will we have, they said, and now looking back, my heart races. What if. But I watched. There was one sex scene and Chloe and I were just newly initiated into the reality of what that meant. We looked away, embarrassed watching with our parents two people make love. There were blankets, you couldn't see anything. Still. At eleven, dad said, hey, what if we order a pizza. Imagine that. These were the days before celiac disease, perhaps before Sam was born. We were carefree, because we didn't believe anything could touch us. Dad ordered pizza from Dominos, I think when Evan (August) listened to the music of the fields. Mom and Dad were happy, I remember, and I remember feeling so happy, I remember brimming until I feared I'd collapse. My whole body screamed in fear of keeping this moment good. We ate green olive and canadian bacon pizza on pink and blue plastic plates while watching August Rush. That was a good movie, mom said when it was over. She liked the music. Dad liked the story. She sat by dad. They went to bed together. I told Sheila the next morning that I had stayed up until one watching a movie with my parents. I remember this, listening to the soundtrack on my grandma's couch. My skin cracks anew. One sone in particular rips off my bandages without warning. If I close my eyes, I see the warmth of that night, the bubble that surrounded us amid darkness.

So long you've been running in circles
'Round what's at stake
But now the times come for your feet to stand still in one place
You wanna reach out
You wanna give in
Your head's wrapped around what's around the next bend
You wish you could find something warm

'Cause you're shivering cold

It's the first thing you see as you open your eyes
The last thing you say as your saying goodbye
Something inside you is crying and driving you on
It's the first thing you see as you open your eyes
The last thing you say as your saying goodbye
Something inside you is crying and driving you on

a boy you once loved.

Once there was a boy you liked who you never kissed or even held hands. Why? Because why. Because a myriad of rules and a million reasons not to and if you did, the impetuous to do it right. Lunch once, that was the most of it, though you drove together. He drove you. You had no license. For one reason, you prayed thanksgiving. It took five minutes to get from your house to Church, and there was a specific structure for each ride. The first two minutes, a gradual relearning of the others voice, of hearing words directed only to you. By minute three, someone would laugh and that would loosen your insides. You would uncurl your hands. The last two minutes you prayed that you could spend a lifetime making him laugh. You hoped for different things then. You were a smaller soul, no, not better, not worse, just not fully grown.

Once, when your Church was a Church and your family a family, he drove you and your sister to a movie at midnight. The Hobbit. You remember this watching the movie at your grandma's house with your sister and the man who will become your uncle. These details matter. Back to that night. He carpooled with four other boys, who crammed in the backseat with your sister. She flushed and stayed quiet. You felt a sliver of sharpness for her but would not give up your seat beside the boy. One boy in the back you disliked. He disliked you. It didn't matter. They left you waiting in line for the movie while they went out and bought snacks. Several boys, not men, made a motion to join you and your sister, but you barred your arms like your space was a door only you could open. They left, the boys came back. Two more boys, your friends, boys you used to sing with and dream simple dreams with, came, and with them, your insides unloosened all the way. The boys you didn't know went into one theater, the three boys and another you loved like brothers, though you didn't know it then, went into another with you and your sister. She was quiet then, not shy, but shut away.

You sat by the three boys who you once loved, yes, all three of them, but the one who drove you the one whose mouth you still watched and eyes you glanced under hoping he carried you in them. Maybe he will make a move, your sister said. You laughed it off and it was like popcorn, salty and smooth and gone with only the taste behind, but still, you hoped. The theater was full and humming like a hive. You sat on the right side, in a curved row. You sat between two boys, almost men, not quite, as they talked to you, and what a glorious day to be alive. To be surrounded by these people you loved and everything was simple and everything kind, even if you did not know it then. There was much you did not know, and they were deeper things than holding hands. The movie began and you tilted your heads toward him and inched your hand on the arm rest and once, the faintest heat of his skin brushed yours. Maybe it was a dream. Maybe it doesn't matter.

Afterwards, you said goodbye. Sometimes you hugged the boys you loved like brothers, but not tonight. The boy you once loved and knew as well as your own family drove the three boys you did not know and the one you did not like, home. Then he drove you and your sister and his brother back. Your sister and his brother sat in the back. You sat in the front beside him and held the taste of the evening in your mouth, refusing to swallow. You would suck on the sweetness of this evening for weeks. Your tongue still knows the texture. It was three in the morning and the freeways were silent and smooth and sloping forever into the distance into a deep blackness like a road that could go on without end and the only way to find out was to drive. The streetlights were silver. The lines were slivers. You laughed and called it eerie and he laughed back, more an answer. This wasn't a time of questions, though you did not know it then.

Thank you, you said, when he dropped you off to a silent house with the porch light still on. I love you, you wanted to say and never did. He waved and drove off. You shut the door. You did not sleep until near dawn. And why. The boy you once loved grew into a man and you a woman and with only the memories of each others names printed like ticket stubs and theaters you cannot enter together anymore. You did not know it then.

ps.

beautiful.

1 AM in the morning and the garage light is yellow and your uncle and aunt, or almost aunt even though they're not married, are smoking cigarettes making the black velvet sky blue like ash. And they're telling you about their baby and the tragedy and triumph of birth, and you're leaning against their smooth car with a couple packs of marlboro's on the fender, arms crossed and head nodding as you listen to them open. You didn't expect this, or regret. Your uncle opens his palms and cradles his arms together, holding a baby that is not there. They put her in your arms, he says, and she's so small and fragile, and you just think, I better not bleep this up. You want to cry. You tuck his words away and repeat them like a prayer. His cradled hands, the shimmer of fire on the driveway before it's extinguished. There's an intense beauty and bittersweetness to this moment, as all moments are when there is no beginning, no ending, no yesterday or tomorrow but only the present, only the sweet thickness of smoke while everyone lies asleep, only the arms holding a baby that is not there, only the inhales and exhales and the way stories tumble out of you when you're open to the sky, vulnerable. And you think, how can I leave and in the exact instant, the reasons you need to stay are the reasons you must go.

1 AM in the morning and your uncle and aunt are speaking and you and the whole world are listening and waiting for the first syllable and when they come the words burn the air like fire, and every breath is a please, and every shot of ash in your lungs is a step on eggshells. Don't lose this. Don't break this.

Beautiful.

What I will do the rest of the summer.

I will read through the entire archives of The New Yorker. Or at least try. Devour whole entire pages of fiction and poetry and prose and truth. I will try to hear their voices without adding my own. I will not go hungry.

I will eat fresh peaches once a week. Soft ones. Hard ones. Sweet ones with the juices running on your arms brown from the sun. My arms are not brown. I do not tan. I am pale, freckled on my face if I'm lucky. I will eat peaches, even if they have no taste.

I will go swimming again. I will wear my black bikini. I will shriek with something called confidence when I go under the cold clearness of the waves. I will not shrink. Maybe a little. I will open my eyes underwater and pray for a fish to nibble my toes and when it does with its mouth sucking and small like sand, I will be still.

I will walk to a dairy queen and get a large icecream cone, just plain vanilla, and eat it outside. Even if there are mosquitoes. In my mind, the night is blue soot and tastes like smoke. There are red benches in front of our local icecream shop. I sat on them when I was little. I will sit again.

I will wake up in time to catch the sun. This is a difficult process. Too early and the sky is like silt in your eyes. Too late and you miss the smudging. I will wrap myself in a blanket and sit on the front stoop and see the sun burn the sky open if I time it right.

I will eat alone in a nice restaurant all by myself. I will wear my little black dress, my favorite one. Maybe fancy underwear. I will ask for a table on the roof, overlooking the street with the well-dressed people hurrying towards their definition of home. There will be yellow lights strung on vines as the evening dims. I will order sparkling water and drink it like wine. Eat oily pasta slowly, tear into soft crusted bread. Treat myself to dessert. Love myself and let it look like nurturing.

I will spend all day reading books in my favorite coffee shop. Or visit four cafes and order something different at each. A book each building. Here a cappuccino with Homekeeping. The table by the window, a cold press, The Maytrees. So it goes. The last I will stay in the corner chair until closing.

I will go berry picking and bring nothing home besides the stains on my fingers. I will not practice patience. I will reach until thorns remind impermanence. Blueberries, raspberries, blackberries, strawberries. In my grandpa's backyard is a boysenberry tree. I will search the patch until I can name by memory.