#uncoffeed...

This year has been all about trying to be OK with the other person not hearing my thoughts about our falling outs - Blue She's right, so right. The year before was all about me learning to speak my mind, giving my words to the other party, gifting them the choice of how to handle my message. Relationships fall apart because of words not said, so goes the saw. People pass away leave us die, so you're supposed to tell them things they might have wanted to know. Only they don't, do they? They don't want to know. And that is the choice meant to be offered in the traditional wisdom. If you love somebody, tell them. Only don't, because they aren't prepared to accept the sentiment without having an approved box in which to store it. They aren't ready to let it wander free. Trust  means I must give you permission   t o say  no . So I've receded. Again. I dislike this very much. Tell people you love them in the same way you point out that it...

My love is like sand that clings to my feet when I walk on the beach: it's cold, yet giving, conforming to my shape and then falling away, leaving irritating particles that must be brushed aside when dry. Beginnings of a thousand novels, like case files of long-forgotten crimes never to be solved, clutter my shelves and our computer. I keep them buried, but at hand; perhaps one day something will spark and all will become clear. I call the shelves mine, because my husband has no use for them. They hold things waiting for me, not us. I tell him how important it is to always have a "me" in my culture. Mine, not his - his, not mine. What is his? Where is ours? The cats are ours. He tells me his mother doesn't think we should live with cats. "I think she wants to be the woman of this house," he says, his eyes twinkling while his face remains placid. He looks at me from an angle, waiting for response. "Of course she does," I reply. You le...

So. Let me start by saying I find a certain sexiness in the art of colanders - the word itself, too. I no longer have my grandmother's star-patterned aluminum colander; the one on my wall is more modern with clean lines, marring only visible from discreet angles. That's not why we're here, but it matters to the narrative. We're here because I've found myself entangled with a Gordian knot of poets on Twitter. Nothing edifies my strangled artistic octopus-heart more than volleying word-games. NOTHING. The weekend took a circuitous route through winter synaesthesia, poetry readings, and book-shelfies, ending with two important things: 1) Pablo Picasso published a book of poems while he was on hiatus from art. The surprise is not that he did it, but that I didn't know about it. 2) Colanderesque as a word is in use, mostly outside the United States. Somewhere in the middle of the knot was discussion of juggling muses, in which I was called brave. There...