life
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from, Chapter 4: Walnut Season It starts like this: the end begins with the cards. For years, I kept my life organized on 3×5 index cards—neat, white, lined. They lived in small gray boxes stacked on chrome wire shelves above the kitchen sink. Stainless, or trying to be. Twenty boxes, two deep, three high. A…
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the old woman is making a war in the other room— shoving anything not nailed down, raising more dust than she ever sweeps up. I don’t look. looking is an invitation. and it’s Saturday. and Sunday is coming. “preach it,” I whisper to no one. I hold my phone like it’s a holy book. feel…
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The screen glowed in the 2:30 AM stillness, a sudden star in the domestic dark of his bedroom. Her text bloomed, then vanished, a digital ghost that left its afterimage on his retinas. Arlo fumbled for the phone, pressing it awake. He didn’t bother with his glasses; his nearsightedness was a loyal servant in the…
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“It’s been seven hours and fifteen days,” (Sinéad O’Connor, Nothing Compares 2U)or 2191 days if you’re the kind who needs the math, since you walked in like you owned the placeand bent me into a kind of happy I didn’t trust but wanted anyway.It only needed water, we thought.Turns out it needed a whole lot…
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“Chancho. When you are a man, sometimes you wear stretchy pants.” Nacho Libre Nacho Libre drops that gem on his sidekick while getting busted in his luchador tights, and damn if it didn’t sneak-attack my brain the other day. Picture this: I’m crawling along the freeway, soul-crushing traffic turning my car into a rolling therapy…
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I left,then came back,less each time,until what I left behindwas more than what waited for mewhen I returned. This happened with love,with dreams,with promisesmore than I wanted to admit. I tried to believeI came home richer,but truth tugged at me:I left pieces behindand never returned with more. She must have seen it,must have felt itsometimes…
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Do you recall the days gone by,Before the net lit up the sky?When phones were fixed upon the wall,And life moved slow, if moved at all. Messages waited by the door,A scribbled note, not something more.No pings or dings to steal the day,Just peace until you made your way. The world was smaller, sure, it’s…
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for my son, who flew toward his own sun It’s always been a sin, hasn’t it?To want too much.To hope.To leave.To stay. The days with you—man once a boywaiting for eggs I’d scramblelike penance,as the toaster hummed its tired absolution,those mornings are rosaries now,threadbare prayersslipping through guilty hands. You make your own breakfastin a city…
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Today’s Prompt: Do You Have Any Collections? I’ve collected things, sure. Baseball cards, once. Matchboxes, briefly, though I’m still not sure what possessed me to start that one. Maybe it was the smallness of them, easy to gather, easy to lose. Like most things that felt important once and now sit in some dusty box…
BB Grey--musings 