First inhalations past the threshold, wordless perfume somewhere between dust, sunlight blooming floral in an open mouth, and linen. My grandfather said his first action home after slipping the tired strap of his travel-bag off his shoulders was to kiss the coverlet of his bed, and at eight I couldn't comprehend. Now I understand it is prayer and apology for wanderlust, infidelity to spaces we so often take for granted. I cannot steal his ritual, so mine lingers in breath instead-- I refuse to breathe until I open the door, until I hunger for home, and home becomes my lungs again. I breathe around the word like wine, lips closing around the syllable, a spoonful of shepherd's pie. I am the sommelier of journey's end; it is never the same bouquet twice. Sometimes the rice has gone bad in the fridge, overpowering the ghost of lavender; Sometimes three o'clock warms old candle wax, leaving notes of peony and laughter. I savor all the same. I wonder if the doorframe
The moon could whisper comfort. She could rest sweet crowned in a slumbering oak, saying, Peace around your shoulders as a shawl, settled in the small of your back.
Pieces of Memory--Austin by callerofcrows, literature
Literature
Pieces of Memory--Austin
Something in the chord structure stretches me toward an undisclosed summer. 9:00 breathes through the blinds, feline. My fingers brush between alternating stripes of (what I imagine are) January shadow and August, stifling. This? Not a memory; I've never caressed walls at the 30th parallel, but the staccato pulls my back toward places the front of me hasn't seen. Maybe music mirrors these paths I obsess with and peek at through my fingers-- choices made, another universe; a collateral me.
I expect, around midnight, we will not cheer. We will not gather, exultant, proletariat around the guillotine. We will hug our knees, children hiding from a ghost behind a counter. We will hold our breath until our hope-tinged lips are blue. I do not mean to say "we must cower." Rather, like all advice in horror, we must first see the body of this year before pronouncing it dead. We must listen to our folk-tales, superstition that follows our aunts like salt tossed over the shoulder They would be the first to tell us bad luck follows exultation over corpses.
Pieces of Memory--Connecticut by callerofcrows, literature
Literature
Pieces of Memory--Connecticut
Colors tie to memory-- this time, a house listing with maroon porch accents that yank me to the sidewalk across my childhood street. What did my mother plant, crouching? It was summer--were they hostas? I can see the stripes of her tank-top, the flower-patterned garden gloves waving from her pocket. How many feet of my father's twine did I ruin at eight years old, making "boy traps" in the lilacs? I made thumbprint animals on my window, my company while grounded. Why do I miss these moments, insignificant until this instant? Can I measure such questions in yards of wasted time?
October sticks to the small of my back, whispers from the breeze or creek, indiscernible. The sunflower chaff stirs by the oak-barrel garden, ushered off the edge and carried west. I smile at the broom handle cool on my palm. I smile at autumn, kissing soft on mesquite. I smile at the drowsiness of 4:30 light. I smile that I have a porch to sweep.
Holding on to Endless by callerofcrows, literature
Literature
Holding on to Endless
It's been a while but the smell of fire stays, the glass refracts in color, and the leaves catch on September. Ages could drawl like needlework, brick-still would I sit, savoring the bite of this whiskey-toned moment gripping, wrapping every minute like a shawl. This year aches like a flash-flood, wracked without warning, bramble-torn from bank to tired bank. Hopes are absent, empty-armed, but mine are long, and stretched around this instance.
One minute you will stand watching prior moments drift past your fingertips on kite strings. You will think, I could not have known such things would fly away. You will think, I was happier tied to such fragments of time. You will think, My heart sang for lack of knowledge. My heart leapt for ignorance. Witness now--the mouth of a tunnel, think then on the other end. Close your eyes and fall backward, into the shoes of former selves, envying their blindness to this present. Linger. Then lean back into reality-- your future shouldn't need to wander forward alone.
color concentrated fading from my shoulders to my ankles, graduated ombre; i am caricatured. there is little for me to do but drape myself Dali-esque, melting in dusk, shunning sun. in the after, i alternate between euphoria and soul-shattered nothing as i sit another hour waiting for normal. hoping for grace. wishing for different.