the last blue iris

We drove from Portland to Seattle, walked through two colleges, one urban, one treed and full of enthusiastic undergrads. We ate at a vegan restaurant, we slept in a fancy Marriott hotel, we talked about music and art and then, when we got home, we bought wax pastels and mixed media weight paper, and talked about what to do when friends self-harm or we are afraid friends might self-harm.  We made three laps through Pike Place market, watched the sun set on Puget Sound. We saw Mt. Rainier shift through the clouds. We ordered burritos in the hotel, coffees in the morning. It has been sunny and cold.  We walked around the University of Puget Sound on Friday and I stopped being able to feel my legs. He slept on the ride home from Tacoma, and all I could think of was all the times I drove with him asleep in the car, in his carseat, or in the back seat, or with the seat flat in the front. Home to Michigan from Minnesota or Wisconsin, or Illinois while my folks still lived there or m...

It is coolish and breezy, and the sky has gone pearlescent, bushtits and finches and chickadees busy then quiet in the cedars. What is cool in August is different than what is cool in April or October. The  air smells like glorybower, someone barbequeing, dry cedar duff and dry earth, and earlier my hands smelled of crushed tomato leaf, begonia. Sometimes I think how did I get here, 45 and half a continent away from home?   But what is home? I am reading Louise Erdrich's The Sentence  which feels different and beautiful for Erdrich, and I am homesick for the Midwest, the white pines of Michigan, the two-note song of a Chicagoland cicada, the waters of Lake Michigan this late in the season. Mosquitoes and blackflies. Air so thick with humidity it feels like wet wool, like another skin, another body on your body. I am homesick and then I am not, for my home is here, salal and fir, cedar and problematic glory bower, sky crowding with crows as we move toward sunset, the Perse...

 The air smells of autumn olive, is thick and humid. When I walk outside, roll down the windows of the car, it is a solid thing. At the Lakeshore, biting black flies swarm when i move into the shade, my skin wet with sweat. 96 degrees, 60% humidity. Only a few gulls over the still water of the Lake.  * When I first started coming back here, 8 years ago, it felt like around any corner a ghost of myself would emerge, still living her life here. Today I waded into the Lake up to my waist, knotted my dress around my hips, watched the horizon. Women with families--women with lithe bodies and bikinis and toddlers--waded into the water and faced the shore. It is reassuring that I am now invisible to the beautiful young people on the sand. I turned my face to the horizon, felt as if I was moving backwards, spinning out of this  version of my life, the current tugging gently at my knees.  * I cannot write. My mind feels scoured of thoughts; I walk and walk and run and run and...

I am having a difficult time writing these days, or thinking, or doing much of anything at all. The world is terrible. I find myself disassociating regularly, crying at odd intervals. We spent the weekend in Albuquerque, with my mother and sister-in-law, the expanse of sky and sage and sand stirred up by fierce winds, sun unrelenting and thicker-bodied than the sun here. The pandemic is clearly over in the Southwest, or at least everyone has agreed to pretend it is so. We were the only family wearing masks in food halls, grocery stores, the airport. At the airbnb, my boy and R. and I played cards and laughed until our sides hurt, then spent the days quietly in my in-law's house, my mother-in-law ailing upstairs. Ailing, but still herself, still rolling her eyes at her children. We went through family memorabilia recently shipped from Nevada: Masonic regalia, cavalry swords from the Boer War, gold ledgers from 1868, war medals, old letters, and then shockingly, Nazi patches and a Na...

On April 11th, we awoke to snow. Schools closed, power in and out, internet in and out, trees down and falling down. Trees that were heavy-laden with blossoms: double cherries, lilac, manzanita, a crab apple pulled up by the roots. On April 12th, I drove home from work through rain, thunder, hail and then snow. At choir rehearsal, we could barely hear each other over the hail on the roof. Cherry blossoms everywhere. The kitchen floor has been buckling--great rises and bubbles in the linoleum and when I pulled the threshold up, it was wet and smelled of mold. Do not ask how much a new kitchen costs. We will have to pay it. We thought it was from the old dishwasher leak, but today a drip of water from the basement ceiling on R.'s neck, and more water seeping from beneath the threshold: perhaps it is the new dishwasher that is leaking.  When I drove J. to therapy, we saw a bald eagle on a cell tower, an osprey on its nest on a billboard. The sky was bruised. It hailed when we drove ho...

On the afternoon of the Worm Moon, I stepped outside to plod my obligatory 5 miles and a coyote tore east down the street. An old man walking a half-score of small dogs was bent over, petting one or the other. Holy shit!   I said. COYOTE! COYOTE COMING UP BEHIND!  I yelled. The coyote disappeared, east down Flanders. I set off west. The sky was mottled; the air smelled of cherry blossoms. * Outside of our house on Grosse Pointe, though J. doesn't remember it, was a weeping cherry. For a brief moment in the Michigan spring, it exploded in a haze of pink blossoms. A month ago, I googled our old address, and there were photos from when I sold the house: my old bedroom, the kitchen with the chalk wall, the orange chairs, the IKEA pendant. I felt a hard knot in my stomach. A lifetime ago. * I spent the evening of the Worm Moon crying, angry as hell. We have water between the shitty vinyl floor and the subfloor of our kitchen. The vinyl has buckled and when I removed the thresh...

I am finding it impossible to write. To read. To do anything other than stare into the void (i.e., read the entire internet). I check out e-books, read a few pages, space out, watch tik toks, crochet ill-fitting hats, four scarves, run. There is a pain in my thigh, my shoulders hurt from doing handstands in the hallway, I used to do gymnastics, could walk on my hands, could cartwheel across the beam, hurl myself at the vault. I see my face in the mirror, lined, tired, thin and pale and tired. I already said that. I give up alcohol for January because I think it will help me sleep but I don't sleep, I wake because I'm grinding my teeth, because the olden dog is moaning, because it is 5 AM and the olden dog needs to go outside, wants breakfast, wants company. I gave up drinking for January also because there is still a part in my brain that says you'll lose weight this way  that says any urge is a bad urge. To want to want anything is suspect, wrong. I put on a mask (the floo...