journal entry
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A man fixes what’s broken in a woman’s house long after he’s stopped being able to fix what’s broken between them. Brett was on the phone with Kelly, listening as she recounted the small dramas of her workday.“So-and-so was complaining about this and that,” she said, her voice running out of steam until resignation set
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After the squirrel, after the bread I. 4 a.m. — the heater hums its question. Afternoon, the air conditioner answers back. Between them: my body, a pendulum of want. II. Winter is a furnace. Summer, the frantic living. But here, autumn — I am learning the grammar of letting go while still breathing. The verb
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It’s Friday, which is supposed to mean something—and I suppose it does, to those people. The ones I imagine still belong to the Thank-God-It’s-Friday congregation. Their voices rise like smoke from a distant fire I can no longer smell. But at fifty-seven, when there’s so little left to kill, Friday arrives like fog along a
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I thought how lucky I’d been —you plunged both hands into my chest,fished the last beast out by its roots,proud as some surgeon of sorrow.You called it mercy. I called it vacancy.A wind now whistles through the chamberwhere furious heat once kept me warm. We die on hills we did not choose, and some we
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Saturday doesn’t show up smiling. It comes grinning like a wolf, collecting all the half-finished jobs and promises I left scattered Monday through Friday. The weight of them lands on me the moment I wake. There’s this strange pressure to make Saturday count. Not quite work, not quite rest, more like a holding pen for
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Rain in my boots once taught methat misery seeps upward,one cold inch at a time.Feet chilled, blood chilled,the whole body trickedinto believing joy was impossible. Life does this too:one regret, one old griefrunning its circuit like a tide,turning the warm currentinto undertow. Today, I’m on my knees,teaching how to lay flooring.Snap, click, measure, cut.Start at
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Chapter: Corduroy Communion Sunday arrived like an unasked question.I thought of walking,right after thinking I should lose ten poundsbefore Thanksgiving makes martyrs of us all. But the bed conspired against me.I read, I scrolled,until I saw them—corduroy pants,soft-ribbed armor I’ve wanted for years. I’ll buy them when I’ve lost the weight.As if joy must be
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Jesus loves you, the sign read. A crooked heart leaned against the words—hand-drawn, imperfect, but certain. A King’s promise sketched onto cardboard, lifted above the choking traffic of the 101. The valley swallowed me whole. I was just another cell in the city’s concrete artery, staring toward the San Gabriels where the light still knew
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Have you ever loved a photograph? Not the person.The paper. Corners curled.Edges yellow.Your fingerprints pressed into it—again, again. A relic.A prayer. Flat image—yet it breathes.Two into three.Three into somethinguntouched by time. I fall inside.Invent the dialogue.Score the silence.Make the light softerthan it ever was. The picture forgiveswhat memory could not. I keep too many.They hold
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The Trojan Horse, Revisited They say a Trojan horse works only once—unless it’s carved so beautifulit blinds the guard at the gate. And you—you were that beautiful. I opened the walls,welcomed you in,mistook the hollow for holy,the silence for love. You studied my blueprints,found the unguarded doors,and from your belly spilledarmies of half-truths,promises sharp as
BB Grey--musings 