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heartshaped

(short fiction)

Heartshaped

Vaguely heartshaped, that’s how you described her face, and I always imagined her—with my child’s-eye, literal imagining—as having a face the color of a pink valentine’s candy heart, a face with a pointy chin and also big eyes made of chocolate, because you said hers were brown and melty.

That’s how I saw her, my grandmother I never knew.

The photos were all lost in the legendary house fire, so I never got to see her, how she really looked. I used to long to be able to visit her, like my friend Annie did her Nana. I thought that the first thing I’d do was crawl in her lap and tell her how much you missed her and how much you talked about her. It seemed that would please her, and the way your face looked when your talked about how her singing made the moon rise, how she played a mean game of cribbage and could bait a hook with one hand made me want to know her, and please her.

Later, when I was near-grown, everyone began to remark how like her I was. I used to pull my dark curls away from my face and look for signs of the tell-tale sweetness emerging, but to me, the eyes reflecting back in the mirror were cold as the glass itself, cold as any Canadian January. My face itself was more of a pillow shape. I began to wonder what sort of sieve memories run through, to sugar them so.

Much later still, describing you to my own children, I honeyed your brown hair, I made your eyes the color of the ice on a bright day in March, that fresh slate color, and I made your hugs as warm as raisin-oatmeal cookies fresh from the oven. I waited for them to pepper me with the questions I once would have asked.

My children were raised on your photographs, though. Raised, too, on reality TV and iPods and textbooks, not fed random poetry and left to wander woods and libraries alone, the way I was.

I thought I was doing the right thing, educating them, drilling them with the math facts that I myself could never pin down, the after-school tutoring, summer enrichment programs, sending them to the Catholic school for good discipline and rigor.

But I think I made them blind.

This short piece was written from a prompt in workshop, using the Amherst Writer’s and Artists method.
I am from

I, too, am from a sift of lost faces
from patterns I can’t untangle
from an endless string of cats purring
from tall pines and the hum of box fans in the window
from Carolina humidity and red dirt
and Spanish moss dripping everywhere
like paint from my sloppy brush, messy

And now, I am from here.

(snippet from a writing prompt using the classic George Ella Lyon poem, Where I’m from, a poem that has inspired many, many poems, and is one of my favorites.)
back through time

back through time

I lumber back through time unrooted
over boulders gap-eyed water glinting pink sunset
unrooted I slide through mud
into sand into lake
stone wash hillsides caving in
I am caving in
all I have to hold onto
all I can carry
this basket, sweet-grass woven

Inside is my pacifer
rubbery round I sucked hard to make the world
go away, and a half-empty pack of Marlboro Lights
that got me through the night
and my mother’s dark gaze, and the way I waited and waited
but she died when I left
In the sweet, sweet basket, a satin ribbon, blue of my father’s
wave and smile from the hospital bed in Kettering
I want, I think, to keep that?

I want to keep the window seat and the slanting roof top
on Cornell Place, keep it in the basket so I can climb back
lie, watch the sky with handfuls of clouds sliding by
I want to keep the way you said “why do you think you’re crazy?”
I want to keep the puzzlement of that
sweet belief sparkling
floating like golden moats in the sunset
I want belief, a thin film of it like magic dust

I want to carry my children’s laughter, and every single hug
and the brick of anger I lobbed through the glass window of us
I want to keep that, too, to remind me
broken is something to keep, too
But mostly I want to keep those giggles that skipped like stones
across the mirror lake
that shone like a string of lights in a summer garden
I want to keep every purring swirl I ever held
and even the ghost who stood there
watching me heartbeating fast, pretending sleep

It’s my basket. I can keep what I want.

––––

The above was written in a twelve-minute fastwrite from a prompt developed by one of my classmates at Amherst Writers & Artist’s Workshop Leader training in Chicago this September. Along with my fellow students, I delved into the AWA method, which you can read more about here. I was drawn to the method, based on the work of Pat Schneider, because of her bedrock belief that every single one of us is born with creative genius, that EVERYONE is a writer/storyteller (regardless of educational level, age, or socio-economic status). Writing that moves us, inspires us, makes us feel, makes us laugh, makes us cry—such writing is the result of connecting to our deepest voices. Our true selves.

I already knew this to be true—that everyone has within them a unique and creative voice. I learned it from the skilled leaders and community at Cincinnati’s Women Writing for (a) Change, where I found my voice (which I had all but lost) in core classes, workshops, and retreats.

This summer it became clear to me that what I most wanted is to learn ways to unlock that magic for others. All kinds of others. People who aspire to write books, people who have written many books, people who want to write poems, people who don’t think anyone wants to hear their stories, people who think no one is listening, or that no one cares. The act of expression—genuine, authentic expression—is an act of liberation. For me, it is transcendent.

Writing is when I connect to my soul-self.

At AWA training, my classmates and I learned about taking creative risks, about creating an environment that welcomes the seeds of new ideas and allows craft to bloom. It was a transformational week.

I’m happy to say I’m a certified AWA Workshop Leader now!
Tonight I led my first small-but-mighty AWA-method workshop at Clifton Cultural Arts Center.

I think I will put tonight in my basket, and keep that, too.
love poem to the world, #16

Never lose hope, my heart, miracles dwell in the invisible.
—Rumi

love poem to the world, #16

The way my brain flares as I dream of you, electric
while purple finches sleep hidden in dark branches

how egg met sperm in warm depths and became you
while the soul of my mother sang in the breeze

the soft ocean roar when you press an ear to a silent conch
how sunny laughter spreads, fanning like spores on the wind

oh, see: the perfect geometry of snowflakes and crystals? what is
more beautiful than the curve of a femur or a rib or your smile?

I’m in love with the snaky way freshwater travels seaward, undulating
with the mystery of my fingers knowing before my mouth can say

and how patterns repeat: rivers and streams forking, ever narrower
like the web of arteries and veins inside my body, your body, every body

and the churning of the world, tides washing to and fro, forever
to and fro, to and fro, beating inside my heart, your heart, every heart
Dear Senator Portman

Dear Senator Portman,

Can you tap into that part of your soul that unlocks and opens up with compassion for your neighbor? You did once.

Part of me, that hopeful, naïve girl raised in a suburb that was “nice” and had “good schools” believes you can. That’s the sliver of me that tenaciously refuses to let go of the notion that at heart, a man like you with every advantage, a man like you with faith, a man like you with power — will try to be compassionate. That surely, surely, you would not be complicit in ending the fragile protections afforded the Dreamers among us.

And yet: you turn your back. You coat yourself in political Teflon and try to slide under the radar. You want it both ways. You want to be obedient to your party and your president — and also be seen as a fine Christian conservative. I wonder how you manage this juggling act. Are you hoping redemption will save you, in the end? Are you hoping that denial can allow you to be complicit in great injustice, and still, you can claim, somehow, to love your neighbor as yourself?

I invite you to try a thought experiment. Remember when your son told you and your wife that he was gay? You had an epiphany then, a spiritual awakening: suddenly you could see that gay people are simply people with different sexual orientations, and that they should be able to marry if they choose to. Suddenly, through the eyes of your son, you saw that the policy you firmly supported denied him something you valued very much.

Back then, you said it like this: “Jane and I were proud of him for his honesty and courage. We were surprised to learn he is gay but knew he was still the same person he’d always been. The only difference was that now we had a more complete picture of the son we love.”

Okay, here’s the experiment. Imagine back to when you and Jane were new parents with small children. Perhaps when your son, Will, was 11 months old. Close your eyes. Really, really think. Remember how oftentimes Will was only comforted in the arms of his mother? Remember how he’d stop sobbing and burrow his head into the crook of her arm, how his whole body would relax into a deep sigh, feeling safe and held? Remember how you’d well up, feeling the palpable love, seeing that bond, being part of that circle of love. Did your chest expand as it filled with fatherly pride? Would you have done anything for that son, for that wife?

Breathe into that. Feel it in your body.

Now imagine the next moment there is a knocking at the door. ICE agents are there to examine Jane’s papers. Only now Jane, in this thought experiment, was brought to this country by her uncle when she was nine. She’s as “American” as you are, but not to the ICE agents. You are not a Senator in this experiment. You are just a working man, a brown one at that. But inside you are you and Jane is Jane and they are taking her away and Will is screaming for his mama and you cannot afford a lawyer and it wouldn’t do you any good even if you could and now they are deporting her — sending her to a country where she knows no one. Leaving you with your heartbroken son. Perhaps Jane was still nursing your son when they ripped her away — she didn’t get to pack a bag, or kiss you or the children goodbye. Stone-faced, they took her away. Locked in a windowless cell, her breasts fill with milk; they swell and ache and grieve along with her heart. You imagine her there, alone, and feel angry, powerless. You pray to God for help.

You write to your senator, pleading.

A miracle! Your senator answers: “the overriding message of love and compassion that I take from the Bible, and certainly the Golden Rule, and the fact that I believe we are all created by our maker, that has all influenced me in terms of my change on this issue.” (1)

And the senator who previously towed the party line — why, God must have spoken to him, for now, he speaks up for you, a helpless father, because he cannot bear the idea that a person brought to this country as a child would be expelled, for no good reason. That a mother would be ripped from her child. For an accident of birth.

The senator who previously stayed silent or tried to atone by speaking up for sex trafficking victims sees that you, the bereft father with the crying children, living on the edge of extreme poverty — and sees that you are his neighbor too. Your senator sees that he can, and must, speak truth to power.

Or else lose his own soul, supporting policies designed to terrorize those not born the right color or orientation. Supporting a president who would pardon a man known for his cruelty and abuse. Suddenly, in an amazing moment of grace, the senator rises up and does what is right.

Oh, it’d be a miracle if you read this. I know that. A miracle if you’d put yourself in a Dreamer’s worn shoes.

But there’s a sliver of me, foolish and hopeful as Anne Frank once was, who believes in miracles, like Anne did, before the political powers of the day refused to speak and act for her: “I keep my ideals, because in spite of everything I still believe that people are really good at heart.”

And so: are you? Good at heart?

Before you answer, think of Riccy Enriquez Perdomo and her 11-month-old baby and the ICE agents that tore her away, and will tear her away again, if you and others like you remain silent. Imagine the anguish of her husband. Think of them and multiply by 700,000 or so of your neighbors. Make the calculation; square it with compassion. (2, 3)

Look into your loving heart and ask yourself if you can really turn away this time. (4)

Sincerely, Elaine

1: quote by Senator Rob Portman, on his change of stance on gay marriage. http://www.politico.com/story/2013/03/rob-portman-gay-marriage-stance-088903

2: https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/nation-now/2017/08/24/advocate-ice-says-release-kentucky-mom-who-has-legal-status/599185001/

3: http://www.latimes.com/nation/la-na-daca-deportations-20170419-story.html

4. silence on DACA http://americasvoice.org/press_releases/sen-portman-not-on-letter-for-daca/
some random notes on fear

Fear-based attachments are physically addictive,
states the psychiatrist in the book I’m reading.

(Is that why this nightmare isn’t over yet?)

Explains things:
why ugly hazing rituals cement bonds
why that friend of a friend won’t leave her abuser
(Oh, and she may also know he’ll kill her, if she tries,
but people will still blame her, won’t they?)

And do you remember?
“love trumps fear,” said those hopeful campaign signs

I am relieved to find
I am not afraid of Donald Trump
after blustering “many sides” and “very good people”
After David Duke thanked him for his support
I would spit right in his face — I would
(though I am sometimes, often, afraid
I am not attached yet, it seems)

I would spit on Rush and Sean and Kellyanne, too,
though I don’t hate these people,
they are very dangerous
telling us to fear each other, fear our neighbors
passing out fear like shots at a frat party

— calling things by all the wrong names
sowing more fear —

“The greater your influence,” the evangelical preacher James MacDonald said,
“the greater your complicity, if you don’t call the Charlottesville attack what it really was: a heinous act of domestic terrorism entirely rooted in racial hatred.”

There’s an old story about the Buddha.
His enemies frighten an elephant, hoping it will kill the Buddha.
The elephant charges in panic and the
Buddha holds his right hand up:
Stop, his hand tells the elephant.
Then the Buddha sees the fear in the elephant’s eyes
sees that the elephant is driven by fear
and he opens with compassion.
He cups his left hand,
making a space for love,
and the elephant stops, and bows down to him.

So I think it goes:
open with compassion
love with all you’ve got
call things by their right names (don’t lie)
and say no when others try to crush you with fear.

I’m just trying to sort it out.
Figure out how on earth to respond.
Spitting won’t help.
Seeing might. Opening might. Standing up might.

(Remember, be brave. Don’t attach, don’t attach. It whispers your darkest names…but please, please, don’t fall in love with fear.)
somehow, we have to be the light.

I took my car to the dealership this afternoon. I brought my work along, dreading having to tune out the flash and blare of the ginormous big-screen TV in the “customer lounge.”

Ironically, the last time I was at the dealer, trying to ignore the television, it was Inauguration day. Me, a woman who hasn’t lived in a house with a TV for years now, who would have sooner walked barefoot across a bed of broken glass than watch a man she had zero respect or faith in rise to power — yes, I accidentally ended up seeing the live streaming coverage of Trump being sworn in. It was inescapable in the “lounge.” I gave up trying to work, because they had it cranked up. The office staff was watching, a few mechanics wandered in and out, catching a peek.

I listened to the others, the customers and car salesmen, many of whom probably voted for Trump, making comments about how pretty Melania looked in that ice-blue, how nice it would be to have her in the White House (seriously, someone said that, that she would look so pretty at those state dinners). Oh, how handsome and cute fidgety young Barron was. Switch to a close up of Trump, hand on Bible.

“Look how serious he looks,” marveled a white lady about my age. She sounded relieved, and mildly surprised. Her tone said what I think everyone there hoped: that the campaign was over, and now he would behave like an adult. The pussy-grabbing tapes could safely be shoved into the crypt of collective memory, along with all the things he’d said on the campaign trail. Calling Mexicans “rapists,” hollering for the crowd to “knock the crap out of them! I’ll pay the legal bills!” — well, all politicians say crazy things in the heat of a battle. Don’t they? It’s like a man killing his wife in a fit of jealousy. Sort of, well, excusable, right? I mean, don’t we excuse that? It’s all just locker room talk, to be tuned out, glossed over.

“Wow. It’s gotta be a hard day for them,” said a round-faced woman, as the camera panned to a close up of the Obamas. She sounded like she was commenting on a reality show where a couple’s just been voted off the island. She sounded both sad and gleeful at once. Like, I mean, this is exciting! We wanted change! And look — the camera pans back to Melania’s sculpted cheekbones. “You know she was a model, right? She still looks so amazing. How old is she?”

An older black couple stood up right then, and moved as far away as they could get from the “U” of couches set up in front of the giant screen. The overall vibe in the lounge that day felt more tense than celebratory, even though, as I said, I’m willing to bet many of those present had voted for him, and most of them made comments along the lines of, “I bet he’ll get really smart people in to run things. You know, he’s an excellent business man.”

It was a surreal experience.

I do think most people, liberals like me included, hoped he’d delegate responsibly and treat the job seriously. That he’d want to do right, in the end. End his association with openly racist “platform of the alt-right Breitbart” Steve Bannon. Stop the twitter rants. I mean, he’d be President! He’d have to be a responsible, sober adult. But that was 207 days ago.

Today at the dealership, the big screen was dark and silent, and I really didn’t think about why until I came home and watched a recording of Trump’s press conference online.

That’s why it was off! No one wanted to see that. No one wanted to hear that. No one can sit through that and make polite conversation about his tie.

But we have to watch him, don’t we? We have to listen. We have to speak.

Because he’s not sober — he’s dangerous to our society. Dangerous to people I love, and people you love, too. Dangerous to civility and liberty.

I wonder what the history books will say someday? I wonder who will write them? I wish I could write more coherently about what is happening right now, in real-time, but it all feels too much.

So instead, I took a walk. I took this picture. A bright sunset fading into darkness. A lone streetlamp shining. We have to watch, but not fade into darkness.

All of us who care about our country and everyone in it, we have to watch, and not fade.

Somehow, we have to be the light.
tips for after the apocalypse

My drawing prompt: headline in The Guardian: “Five handy tips for survival after apocalypse.” Sometimes I don’t feel like writing in coherent linear form (generally, after reading the news)…when I draw I can return to a centered place.

What helps you feel good? Do it. For five minutes, ten, whatever fits in your life.
i will be happy when…

Today I started off writing from the prompt: “I will be happy when…” a prompt I used to just ROCK out on endlessly, and I realized I can no longer easily write to that. It made me laugh out loud.

Huh! I am happy now. Not every minute. But now. I am right now. And IN every happy minute, I am there, finally. The wall that kept the happiness slightly removed has dissolved, or mostly anyway. Old pathways persist. I am learning to sit in the sad moments, in the fearful ones, in the frustrated ones, and feel what I feel. My happiness is dependent on being awake to the joy in each day, as well as to the pain and suffering in each day.

Maybe it is:
I will be happy when I allow myself to surrender to what is. Let go of what was, and have faith in what will be.

It isn’t just about noticing the birds singing and the way the crickets are, right this minute, chirping in a way that makes me feel it is late September instead of August. Or about feeling the way the warm water flows over my hands as I rinse my dishes. It’s not about deep breathing or asanas. I mean, yes, that is part of it, noticing things, feeling things, being focused and single-minded.

(As a person whose emotions sometimes swallow her whole, this is often a challenge.)

I spent so many years, numbing myself, holding my vacation days just out of reach like a pretty sunset I kept driving towards, endlessly. Holding my happiness hostage to conditions being just right. And I did enjoy the vacations, those golden-hour weeks. Except when I worried about what would be waiting for me on my return. Except when I avoided feeling things that were other than happy. I was on vacation. It was my earned happy time. Merry-go-round.

I’m still sometimes drawn back to circling like a hawk around yesterday and tomorrow. But I’m learning.

I have what I need. I have permission to be happy NOW. Today. Even if I am worried about something or other. Even if I am very worried about bad things that are happening. Injustices. Brewing wars. Feeling powerless and doing what I can and it seeming not ever enough, not enough. Even if it’s hot and sticky outside, which I hate, and even if I can’t see some of the people I love as often as I’d like, even if I miss them a lot: I can still be happy. I don’t have to wait for the vacation or the visit or the pretty weather. Or a new president (I would like a new president though). I don’t have to wait for an agent to love my work, or for becoming certified at something or successful at anything. My happiness isn’t dependent on being a certain weight. My happiness isn’t dependent on being young. I’m not young anymore, and yet: I’ve never felt more at home in my body and the world. My happiness, I have discovered, is dependent on one thing and one thing only. Accepting what is. Even if what is IS NOT what I want. (Plus poking around to find what is sometimes a bumpy process, and yes, you can stir up an angry hornet’s nest, get stung all over, and still feel happiness again despite the welts.)

This spring I skidded into a deep trough of grief. It was a place I needed to go, but resisted, heels dug in, fear holding me back. I clung to the past. My anxious mind flared. “What if you are never happy again?” it fretted. “What if you feel the hard things and it never stops hurting?” My suffering came when I resisted.

When I let go and finally let what I felt rise up—I discovered I was also finding joy. Lots of joy. The more I allowed those scary suppressed feelings to be seen and felt, the more joy rose in me afterward.

Joy feels like the water on your hands when you are washing the dishes and the afternoon light paints patterns on the kitchen floor on a day you have not gotten it all done. On a day when you did what you could, and felt what you felt to the best of your ability, and forgave yourself moments of confusion. Maybe I’ll never quite know myself, and what I feel, all the time? Probably not. It’s also okay to just be with not knowing.

I don’t have to figure it all out to be happy, do I?

It feels good.
a letter from my worry stone

Another day, another prompt. Today I let my worry stone do the writing. Find something or choose someone, and let them write to you. See what happens.

Dear E,

Finally. I get to tell you my worries. About damn time. Our relationship, up until now, has been entirely one way.

From that moment on the chilly October morning when you stooped down and plucked me from my place in Mississauga, on the shore of mighty Lake Ontario, and tucked me into the tight pocket of your skinny jearns — I have been your captive. I have worried, too, even though I know it’s futile. Worried I’ll never see the sky again.

I long for another sight of that last sky, low clouds backlit by the sun, turning it and the shining water to silver. Silver sky, silver lake, and that smudge of Toronto on the horizon. You think I don’t know about the things of man? (or in your case, woman?) — Oh, E, I’ve been soaking you up for months now. I know everything and now you’ve let me speak. I may never stop.

You picked me, palmed me, smiling. I do fit perfectly in your hand, and your happiness that morning filled me with excitement. So at first I was swept up, pleased to be going somewhere new. You were in love, blushing love, your core worries blotted out in the gush of that. It was a little dull, absorbing your petty insecurities. Mostly I sat on your dresser, alone. You only held me when you felt lonely, and how tiresome that was.

I fell in love with you a little, though. The way you do when someone trusts you to hear their deepest fears. Still, after nearly two years, I miss sprawling in all weathers with the others who were born with me from the crumbling bluffs when winter ice thawed one spring and we all slid free to the lake shore.

Sometimes you worry about the ice melting, which makes me recall the cold years I spent, inching along, swept up in the belly of that glacier, like Jonah in the belly of a great fish.

Your pocket, though warmer, reminded me of that time.

I guess it is my fate, being swallowed and carried. I have stories of my own to tell, beyond your worries of — oh, what don’t you find to worry about? As you hold me in your left hand I soak up your troubles like the earth soaks up rain.

Yesterday, you thought back to the windy morning we met, to your spinning thoughts, to the way you couldn’t believe how beautiful the world was, the water, you thought, looked like a great silver tray polished by the cloudy sun, and the geese flew low over the calm surface. You remembered that feeling, and wondered if you could ever feel just that way again.

And I try to emit an answer into your palm. I try to tell you, no. You will never feel that way again. The woman of that day, elated, heart bursting with love and hand sweaty with worry over losing love, she is gone now.

She had to get swallowed into the darkness, like the glacier, like the belly of the whale, to discover that no matter how dark, you must stay and let the darkness be your home, accept it, know it. And trust that in three days, three months, three years, three eons — sometime, somehow, the silvery light will return. Because it never really leaves.

So you can go back, looking. You can even retrace your steps on the shore of Lake Ontario. If you do, please put me back near the crook of that inlet, the place the geese gather at dawn and sunset. Take me back, even though I cannot revisit that day, either. It is gone. All my old loves will have sunk down or washed out into the lake. But it would feel so good, to tell new friends old tales. To laugh together about worrying over flesh and blood and human failings.

Perhaps I will lie under the sky, let your many worries loose in the breeze. Do not fret, E, about growing old. Let that one go. Only worry about not growing. Your fear of infirmity is comical to a stone like me, dependent on nature to move me at all. And still — I have, over millions of years, seen much of the world. Seen beauty you cannot even imagine. Do you understand?

The world will hold you, if you just let go.

Surrender. Let go of me, of controlling things, of fearfulness. I think you are figuring it out, just a little. From the darkness, you will emerge, you already are — to find the next world you are meant to explore.

with love,
Basalt

The shores of Lake Ontario, where I found Basalt.

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