MsCellanea

I will not cook for you.  It is both lack of interest an lack of talent because my Southern mother gave me strong white teeth Yes sir no ma’am, and grandma’s pearls, but not the family lust for spatulas and Mix well. So no, I will not cook (for lack of trying I assure you.) But for you, I will singe fingertips on dishwasher hot plates and rinse saucepans and most likely call for takeout. The dog will live unwalked if he is left to my devices. The tulips from that garden shop by your parents’ house will never have the cool, wet courage to kiss up towards sun. And the sheets on our bed will stay unmade and

Dear Sir, I apologize, but today, your body was les than my own moribund car—smaller than cylinders and spokes and a rusting hood. You were smaller than the car before me, sir, particularly the front right tire. We met in a compact moment and sir, you loomed before me and you were all legs and arms—windmills—and fur the color my mother would stain her hair. Your eyes were scorched at the edges with that dark desperate fear-smell and sir, I left my car stalling on the road to dive my glass-bone body deep into the dark dark ports of your eyes so that my fingers fit into your bark worn fingers and my legs fit in

Today, I learned how to cling for life to a drowning person.  To a whole group of drowning people, really, that moved in one great herd.  It makes sense, perhaps, to consider that as you lose that slick balance in the ocean, as your feet slip from that thin platform that was shaky-at-best in the first place, you reach out for someone not to be saved, but to know at least that they feel the same way.  That you may look in their eyes and see yourself reflected.  We are all off the same boat, all huddled in one place with our fingers wrung together in knots as the water fills us up, up, up. The first thing is to bring food.  Pizza, water, grano

One day, you will see a picture of you, and your hair will look the same as it does now, but the remarkable thing will be that you will be wearing the same shirt as the Old-You still and silent in the frame.  But it will not be YOU as of NOW and the two of you will be separate, as if passing on the street, you might spark recognition at an acquaintance face without a name to complete, exchange pleasantries, and then pass on to the respective destinations and lives that, statistically, perhaps won’t meet again like holy palmers.

I was 8 pounds born and the nurse called me, in red skin, wrinkles, screams, the beautiful one. I rode my bicycle sans-training wheels through the wide open cul-de-sac and into a basketball pole. I failed my first test in Junior year. I made a cross-country journey to a new land and made my first friend three long years later. I read Redwall under the monkey bars and learned about words. When I moved my hands, the music moved. I conducted a band, I conducted my family, I wept from the beauty of it all. I burned brownies and still cannot cook. I ate lunch in the bathrooms in middle school. My best friend saved me and is

Most nights, we were ourselves.  We were the Strangers of the Western World, those playboys that would roost on fence posts and wait and watch for passerby.  We watched for a passing action to follow and trail like vultures hunting something past dead and stumbling.  And The Man would see us there, see the reflections of streetlights tattooed in our eyes, and chase us away out of sight and out of mind.  We ran to run.  Not to get away, but to feel wind, to get out of breath and heave in air with our backs pressed against the ground. There is nothing expected of you once you have lived to a certain age.  When you’re young, they want you

The scariest thing about seeing Myra Banks a few weeks after was that when she looked at me in the face and I looked at her in the eyes, I didn’t recognize her and she didn’t know who I was.  She looked at me with eyes-that-were-not-eyes, more like those globular fishbowls that I would keep betas in on my dresser.  Hers were green, and when they touched up to the skin of my features I knew that she was seeing me and not seeing me and I suddenly remembered the time that my little brother put green food dye in the fishbowls to keep Barry Beta from getting pinched on St. Patrick’s day and the next morning he was floating at the to

My dad is a rock.  He is solid, he is powerful.  He can still pick me up and toss me over his shoulder.  He is never seen to cry, he can never be swayed or damaged by opinion.  He is a real estate agent, and he pushes those deals and sways those clients with confidence and experience.  He flexes his arms at the dinner table when I ask him and points exactly which way it is to the beach or the gun show.  He is a tree, a mountain, a thick and formidable presence in any room, in any place, against any person. “He’s late,” my mom said, and pursed her lips through the ste

 I was promised horses.  I remember this distinctly. My dad knew as well as I that moving isn’t easy, especially to a place so very far away, so he would cushion it with promises such as these.  Thoughts of horses and mountain ranches made the process of tearing away from my homeland all that more bearable, so I complied.  My visions were of a log cabin situated on the hips of the foothills, with gentle mares that would lean their heads in my window in the heat of summer mornings.  Of dirt roads and tractors, of cattle and barbed wire.  But mostly horses, of course. Colorado is not all horses and ranches.  Our house turned out to squ