saturday june 30, 2018

early morning reading and falling asleep again and then waking up because the dogs with their empty bellies are shaking and whining.  my own belly reminding me to drink water and don't even think about coffee until after food unless you want to ruin yourself for the day. 

a carton of buttermilk becomes a stack of pancakes.  i didn't really know what buttermilk was until i was an adult. we grew up with skim milk, the only kind i could ever stomach as a kid. it needed to be grey and almost translucent. buttermilk itself is disgusting.  in cakes and biscuits it is amazing.

i binge listen to old episodes of 'she's all fat'.  people had been mentioning this one for awhile and i've finally gotten around to it and now i can't stop listening. i try to fill the dishwasher in a way that makes sense but everything is too unruly.  i eat a pancake. i let it settle and then let myself have coffee. i make potatoes because we have a dying sack of them on the table.

nothing is sadder than aging vegetables. wrinkly. limp. shrinking. like all things. i will become an elder vegetable someday.  

my body will shrink, my skin and bones will become brittle and the juiciness of whatever youth i have left will leave me.

i think about asia and her failed butterflies. i feel sad and confused that a reality television show contestant could make me want to write her a poem. there is so little kindness these days so hers made me cry.

all this business of building walls. all this process of breaking them down. there's a robert frost poem in here somewhere isn't there?

i sit at the dining room table and i cheat myself, my saturday, by looking at my work email.

i shut the laptop quickly and move on to something else. there's so much more around me that deserve my time.  this bowl of old halloween candy. my little sweet bean who would love nothing more than for me to feed him green beans from my bowl. the husband still asleep in bed.

i read tony hoagland poems. i play the piano. i open the refrigerator several times thinking something new will appear. i contemplate going to the movies simply because i like the snacks. i reassure my dog that the mailman isn't satan for the hundreth time, rubbing behind the ears the way he likes as he hides under my chair.