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Detroit Annie, Hitchhiking
by Judy Grahn
Her words pour out as if her throat were a broken artery
and her mind were cut-glass, carelessly handled.
You imagine her in a huge velvet hat with great
dangling black feathers, but she shaves her head instead
and goes for three-day midnight walks.
Sometimes she goes down to the dock and dances
off the end of it,
simply to prove her belief
that people who cannot walk on water are phonies,
or dead.
When she is cruel, she is very, very cool
and when she is kind she is lavish.
Fisherman think perhaps she’s a fish,
but they’re all fools.
She figured out that the only way
to keep from being frozen was to
stay in motion, and long ago converted
most of her flesh into liquid.
Now when she smells danger,
she spills herself all over,
like gasoline, and lights it.
She leaves the taste of salt and iron
under your tongue, but you don’t mind.
The common woman is as common as the reddest wine.
Humans of New York
How have I never seen this website before? Some of my favorites:
“If you could give one piece of advice, what would it be?”
“Be in love.”
“How many times have you been in love?”
“Once.”
And then he walked away.
“If you could give one piece of advice to a large group of people, what would it be?”
“Stay single.”
After I took her photo, she stuck her cheek out for a kiss. After I gave her one, she said: “Isn’t love great?”
“Yes it is,” I replied. Then she leaned in and said:
“But sex is better.”
I asked if he had any moves.
“When my husband was dying, I said: ‘Moe, how am I supposed to live without you?’ He told me: ‘Take the love you have for me and spread it around.’”
The Extrovert and The Introvert
“What was the happiest moment of your life?”
“There are two: when my son was born, and last night.”
“What made my dreams so easy to dismiss? Granted my dreams are shy, because they’re Canadian. My dreams are self-conscious and overly apologetic—they’re standing alone at the high school dance and they’ve never been kissed.”
That time of the year
Yesterday marked the beginning of a three-week period that I have been quietly dreading for some time now. Easter weekend, one year ago, was the last weekend we spent with Justin.
That Saturday we went to a dinosaur park in the Jura and then took the kids for lunch at Burger King, or as Ben likes to call it, the King of Burgers. It was a lovely day.
Sunday was Easter and we went to the Parc des Bastions with some close family friends. The moms hid Easter treats while the dads distracted the kids, and then after the kids had run around finding their surprises, we sat on the grass and drank Clairette de Die. It was a lovely day.
That Monday morning Justin woke up early and got ready to go to the airport. I told him that if he really wanted me to, I could wake up the kids and we would drive him to the airport. He laughingly told me to stay in bed, so I did. I kissed him goodbye and he left. That was the last time I saw him.
Nineteen days later Betty-Lynn came to my office and told me “Justin passed away last night.” Right at that moment my life fractured into a before and and after, with the time Justin was in Tanzania existing as a kind of interstitial period between the two. That final weekend we spent together as a family, in that city I love so well, remains as my last shiny memory of that glorious before.
I have made it through the first “anniversary” of that weekend. In nineteen days I will make it through the first “anniversary” of his death.
I have survived this. For now, that is enough.