life
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I feel the air against my face,tugging the hair from my eyes.The sun sings its same old refrain,assuring me the day has no end,and this kingdom of dirt and lightis mine to rule. Come here, friend, I tell a ladybug,and study her through the glass,a tiny iced donut from Winchell’s shop.When I stare too long,wings…
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Some people are addicted to chaos because peace is unfamiliar.—Unknown The calendar circles something close. I don’t mean to wound—only to tell the truth: we’re speaking across a distance we built, one line at a time. You said, “We need to have a conversation.” It lands like corporate speak, a eulogy before the body’s even…
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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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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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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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A fraud, they said. But to be a fraud one must first know the real thing.I never got the blueprint, only the ghost of a house.This rope, not hemp but memory, knots me to myself.I dream of Houdini-ing out, each kiss from my wife a lockpick made of breath. I was married once. I think…
BB Grey--musings 