Death by Paper

My carpal tunnel surgery is healing like gangbusters. I’ve been typing since Friday, the day it took place. My right hand is alive again. It feels like a stab wound on the base of my palm but I’m not taking even Tylenol (thank you AA!). The oddest thing about the ordeal is that the anesthesiologist couldn’t knock me out with a double dose of the usual stuff, and we will have to concoct a new cocktail next month when I have the left hand done. Recovering addict / alcoholic that I am, drugs interest me very much.

I’m limited in what I can do with my bandaged right hand. It’s 80 degrees here, following a great rain, and the weeds call me. But left-handed weeding is unsatisfactory. So I decided to participate in Theme Thursday, which today is paper. A memory came to me, and I wrote this poem about it.

The Roll of Newsprint

Seven years old and in love
with a kitten born to the anonymous
family cat, I came home from school
one day eager to see her as always
a girl is eager to see the ball of fluff
known as kitten, cuddly and somehow
near to being just like me, the me
I wished for, an extension of my psyche,
laughter and playfulness in a life
bereft of both. My stern mother said,
before I changed into the designated
play clothes, changed my awful shoes,
when I had just slipped in the door
wary as always of my mother’s
ways,she stood at the sink, working
as always, not looking at me
but responding to the noise of me,
Your kitten died, crushed by the roll
of newsprint in the garage that fell
on it. I cleaned up the mess.
I stood there in the doorway
not comprehending what I heard,
picturing the towering roll of paper
so much taller than I, leaning
on end against a corner of the garage.
My brother’s Cub Scout pack used it
once to paint banners that hung
on a truck in the town’s parade.
It was never used again, thereafter
always standing on end in the corner
and it was heavy, far more than I
could handle. How could it fall?
She was doing something
at the sink and she studied what it was,
and she never looked at me
in my school dress and Dr. Scholl’s
shoes, which I hated, she didn’t bend
down, she didn’t soften the blow.
She crushed me like a roll of newsprint
falling as a ton of death on my fragile
body, my laughter, my kitten self,
never cuddly again.



More takes on the theme here.

Love in the Sand

The Theme Thursday prompt today is two cupped hands holding a heart-shaped handful of sand. I'm having one of those days (and one of those nights) when I want to say something, communicate, whatever, but words fail me. So I'll say something about love and sand. More skillful interpretations of the theme will be found on the Theme Thursday blog.

Love on the Shore

We wandered through the garden of the seashore
through the long brown ribbons of kelp
the seaweed strands like purple spaghetti
the seaweed fans like white bones
the stones cast like confetti on the sand.

The tide ebbed and the surf supped on the land.
The lowering sun spilled a broad silver stain
on the surface of the sea so bright our eyes
could not bear it. We walked the wide brown
pathway of hard sand, following the footsteps

of someone who had gone before us down this
deserted, rocky stretch of coast. A woman
I said, in shoes with pointed toes and stacked heels.
No, you said, a cowboy with small feet in boots
and a long, cowboy stride. They vanished round

a bend guarded, like Scylla and Charybdis,
by giant boulders carved of sand turned to stone
by the millennia. There we came upon a dead
body, a seal carcass hidden among the kelp,
with vultures dining sedately like red-faced guests

around a table. It seemed as much a part
of the haven of the shore as driftwood and
shells, travelers all from some other port and
long dead, caressed by the sea and tossed up
as treasures on the sand for visitors like us to find.

We held hands and wandered on. I carved
I love you at the edge of ebbing waves, sure
that it would last until the tide turns and
erases the garden to begin all over again.
My love for you is not a stranger to the tides.

We climbed the bluffs and stood looking out to
sea like garden angels watching over our little
bit of heaven. We joined the other vanished ones,
leaving only footprints on the sand, and proof
that I love you until the tide turns.

I'm Not Eye Candy

Today is Theme Thursday, and candy is the subject. Everything beyond my nose is a blur, so between me and the world has been the barrier of glasses almost all my life. Here are a few glimpses of my perhaps unfortunate choices in eyewear.

Maybe I'll spy a few more frames later. Gotta run for now. See you later, alligator!

Sweet Peas

Your Gift To Me


The first sweet peas of the season
spring up around the garden gate
white as the half moon
and blushing pink as the dusk
that falls on them like a soft cloak.

A trinity of dusk, moon, and sweet peas
unite in a small bouquet
I present to you, husband
and you pause in your evening chores
to bend and breathe deeply
the fragrance of sweet peas.

Your smile is like the half moon
in a dusky sky.
This is the only essential thing
that has happened all day.
It slides safely into the pocket of my memory
for pondering in leaner times.

*****

Theme Thursday this week is "pink."