a.rose

It's one of those things that I can't make up my mind about.  Part of me wants to talk about it, and part of me doesn't.  And part of me shrugs and admits that I wouldn't know what to say even if I did start talking about it. I don't even know exactly what it was, exactly, that hit me after Hazel was born, and the fog that I lived in that year.  I have wondered if it was postpartum depression, and I have wondered if that is why it is hard for me to talk about it. I still have trouble finding words to describe my experience, because I don't know any words heavy enough to convey how it felt in my head.  This, written a few weeks ago, is as close as I have been able to come. we dance and we are drowning in the flames, burning in the waves yet the sweet, sweet agony summons it is seductive, shrieking, screaming, the sounds of a pain so caught up in pleasure a mask of cocoa mist obscured by moss and blood and still we dance our eyes closed to the...

one hundred cornflakes all over the floor / little feet stepping / each time breaking / each flake / into / a hundred new flakes I sigh I bend down / and I begin / picking up each one by hand / it would be easier / of course / of course / of course / to use a vacuum or even the broom / but / of course / I don’t think of that until the job is  all but done / of course / but the job is never done / and there are puzzles and books and papers and crayons and dolls and trucks and bits and pieces of a life / in the middle of living / if archaeologists dug our / house out of the rubble of time / frozen exactly as it is now / they would know just how we lived / and what we wore / and what we ate / but they would not hear your laughter / your little voices calling / your feet padding / down the hall / en route to new adventures / they would not see / that spark in your eye / of creativity as you make / a paper towel roll into a telescope / of discovery as you learn you can hop on one ...

I left all of this behind for a weekend to go to Charleston, South Carolina to have some therapy and fun with some of my very all time, top of the list, holding nothing back because I know they love me, friends. I got on a plane and I flew across the country and spent the next few days just basking in the glory of beautiful places, good food, the silence in conversation that is only possible when there are no children around, and the people.  Yes, these people. The kinds of people who will do yoga on the beach with you, and just roll with it.  The kinds of people who will do crazy jumps, and wild dances, all on a public beach all while filming everything, just in case we wanted the footage someday.  This picture makes us look like any of the other tourists who were out there on that cloudy, windy day, but it doesn't show the wild antics that would follow immediately after.  It's no wonder that even in our 30s people kept thinking we were college kids on ...