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March 15th

8:02AM

Sun- Too much sun. But that’s only my opinion from behind the safety of my glass sliding door. My iPhone says it’s 36 degrees on the other side of  the transparent barrier boxing me in my warm 620 sq foot cocoon so definitely not appropriate weather for the blue bum shorts and orange cami I have on. I wage a little war in my head between closing the blinds that are casting black and yellow ochre stripes down my slender frame or leaving them open so my whole parlour looks ready for the early stages of a Hitchcock movie. The sunshine wins… Obviously. I don’t even know why I bother with this ritual every Saturday. I adore the light once my eyes adjust and it stops blinding me. Besides, Saturday’s are the only days of the week that I get to fully bask in the sun’s humbling ambiance. “Humbling ambiance” – hmm, I like that phrase…

I spend my whole life with words and phrases. I work a 6-7 job that keeps me on my butt in a dingy room pre-editing  articles for the biggest daily self-help editorial east of Wyoming. And west of Iowa. Okay, okay, it’s the biggest editorial in Nebraska. But, when I talk to people about my job, I usually leave out the west of Iowa part. I also stop at the “daily”, since saying more usually loses me “cool” points. The fewer specifics, the better. Anything to give my self confidence a boost since I have no real friends for a 400 mile radius and I have had no real life in a two-year span. This lovely Saturday though, none of that matters. It’s a beautiful day outside AND I’m going skiing. I am also fully aware that I live in Nebraska without a plateau in sight. But I’m making the solitary drive down  to Jackson, Wyoming. I’ll drive down, glide on some of that beautiful pow, spend the night in a not-so-reliable temporary establishment, catch a morning run or five, then head back home in the afternoon. I’m completely stoked. It’s been a minute since I did anything outdoors. Even longer since I took a solitary road trip. I can feel the greatness of this weekend in my bones! Or is that the crack in my sliding door sending shivers up my spine?

***

12:38PM

The drive up is going okay so far. I just hit Wyoming, its a little past noon, the windows are down, and… a bug definitely just flew unto my dashboard. Whyyyy? I start frantically swatting at it with Khloe Kardashian’s boobs, which are plastered on last month’s issue of Cosmo. Two minutes ago, I had HAIM crooning from the stereo and I felt like I was in a movie about my life (picture “Thelma and Louis, but solo). Ugh, I hate bugs. Plus, this fairytale solo trip is about to go sour faster than milk left out in the sun if I run out of my water crackers nearly four hours away from my destination. Crap, there’s only four left in the box and I definitely left the other box on the kitchen counter. Perfect.  Now all I need is an engine stall or a repeat performance of my food poisoning debacle from yesterday and then I can write this off as the worst day ever. I’m beginning to feel like I should probably have waited till next weekend to go skiing but that feeling is a bit late to the party. Roughly 200 miles to go but for the life of me, I cant remember now why I decided against a trip to Colorado instead…

4:30PM

I made it to Jackson! I’m not even stopping at the hotel first. I’m just going to drive straight to the resort and catch as many runs as possible before I pass out on a bed tonight. The parking lot at the base of the slopes is suffering a bit of human scarcity but I jump out to put on my ski gear, anyway. The fewer the people, the fresher the pow… Holy Mother of God! It’s definitely way colder than my iPhone said it was going to be when I checked the temperature yesterday. What is happening here?! That gust of wind nearly pinched the half of my nose with my nose ring in it clean off. Anyway, I’m here now and half way into my ski boots. I can’t possibly turn back around like a complete wimp. Besides once I’m fully decked out, the cold won’t matter. I buy my half day’s pass from a surly brunette called Carly and catch the chair lift up. Now this is what I’m talking about! This view is e-v-e-r-y-t-h-i-n-g, but it doesn’t look like there’s been a snowfall in at least a couple of weeks. Maybe I’ll only do three runs instead of seven and call it an early night.

4:53PM

Okay, that first run was a bit choppy but that’s why I’ve got sloppy seconds! And if the second time is rough, well, that’s why the saying says the third time’s the charm. My lift descent this time is flawless and ooooh, I’m gathering some steam. Okay, this sloppy second isn’t so sloppy after all. Wait, is that a patch of ice ahead that I see? Better dodge th… Shit.

4:55PM

All the wind was definitely knocked out of my brain. It literally took a full minute for it to reboot and process. I guess my ribs feel like these mountains just used them as punching bags as well. But I seem fine otherwise. Nothing broken or twisted as I twist around to check my derriere. I’m only a little soaked and embarrassed, thank heavens. I don’t even want to think about how bad that could have been.

4:57PM

My tummy feels sore now that I’m up and trying to glide down slowly. My poor stomach lining was probably not prepared for a double attack in a two day span – food poisoning then a “soft” tumble down the slopes. Yea. Probably not.

4:57:30PM

Ok. I’m almost at base but what seemed like a tiny ache on the left side of my tummy a minute ago is absolutely excruciating now. I might as well slide to a halt and see if there’s a tiny branch sticking out of my gut or something. I lift all five of my layers. A quick peek and I’ll determine if a good back stretch or some pepto bismol will fix me right up. Is it normal that my skin is this tender? I know I just shook it up but I can’t touch it and it looks like its swelling. Ok, maybe that fall could have shaken the spleen off my mother but… Oh God, what if my sple…

4:57:13PM

***

Prose et Poesie
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Technicolour

Black.

Black hole, black pillow, black sheets, blank sheets, blank pillow

Black void

Blank line, white line, crimson line, blue line.

Crimson gash, crimson stitch, crimson wound, crimson blood

Black blood, blue blood, blank blood,

No blood.

Black love, black blood, no blood, no love

Black hate, black void, blank love, no blood

Black blood on black wound

Wound in black sheet set on black pillow nursing

Black void

Black music like the buck, like the step, like the twist, like the stick

Black envy like a black rose filled with black thorns creating black holes

Red garden, green garden, yellow garden, purple garden

White garden, white rose, white snow,

White blood

Wine line, fine line, bloodline, crossed line

White chest, wine chest, lying chest, black vest

White sleeve, wine sleeve, cut sleeve, blocked sleeve

Wine float, black throat, long throat, cut throat

Black tip, blank tip, black rose,

Black love

Green leaf, yellow leaf, brown leaf, black fall

White walls, white roof, white washed, white gall

White foam, white froth, white sea, seagull

White truck, white ball, wide ball, white net, white goal

Wine drink, wine seat, wine crown wine love

Wine ring, wine stone, rhinestone, white love, red lust, bloodlust

Bloodlust for wine blood bearing white rings feeding wine drink, feeling

Black love

Black love, white love, wine love, wine rose

White love with wine rose swathed in black cloth

Black cloth, black sheet, white sheet, white rose

Blank white, frail white, tight white, white

White.

Prose et Poesie
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Wilt

He was going through a hard time. They both knew it but somehow, she knew it more. They talked about it in the wordless ways that humans beings in dying relationships converse through act and emotion- through the rashness of acts and the absence of emotions. The Friday night ritual of Chateauneuf-du-Pape was the first to go. Then the intermittent post-it notes hastily placed not all the way down on her phone screen so they were the first things she saw when her alarm went off in the morning, followed. The first few months those darned post-its had irked her. Waking up to her phone alarm and not being able to snooze it right away because some pesky thing was in the way… but they had grown on her. They weren’t ever mushy, too. That’s what she had loved the most about them. And they usually made absolutely no sense but she kept most of them anyway. Some she stored in memory, like the note after the night she had gone out with her girls for some Mexican two months following their move-in together:

“Elsa, please do not let it go when you sleep. It stinks. Love, Olaf. P.S. Coffee’s ready”.

…Or the one after Curry, her pre-pubescence Tabby, passed. That one had been a tiny caricature of a dog with a thought bubble above it’s head saying :

“All (cats that act like) dogs go to heaven.”

She had almost shed a tear after that one. Almost.

It wasn’t the attempts at failed prose or romanticism that engaged her, it was the vigour with which he had adored her smile and the reverence through which he had aimed to preserve it. But all that vanished in the summer of the year her peonies did not bloom.  She was later told by the horticulturist ex-wife of a colleague that her quack of a gardener had planted them too deeply. Their foliage in early spring had held so much promise, the three wilted flower buds that showed in early April brought heart shattering disappointment. Years down the line, friends and family would ask her about that period of her life and all she would ever remember with annoying clarity were those goddamned wilted peonies.

He left in late September. There wasn’t any of that slow realisation that you get when you read a suspense novel or watch a romantic movie. There was no immediate warning but there was the exceptionally huge lump constricting her breathing when she saw him sitting quietly in the living room waiting on her that evening. It wasn’t the waiting or the stiff sitting, not even the single suitcase and stained carry-on shoulder bag leaning on the chaise. It was his complete awareness of her in a way that had not happened in several weeks. She had only just adjusted to life with a stranger and now she couldn’t handle the discomfort of having him stare directly at her and still not see her. She looked blankly at that travel bag the whole time he talked. He told her it had been over a long while, that he had tried to re-invest time and time again. He mentioned the one day she had come in shouting about the unwashed dishes and he had had such a difficult day but she had not even cared. She was mildly aware that he spoke a long time but she was careful not to listen to the details. She knew this would become an argument if she did and she did not want that; she was too good at gathering that kind of word ammunition but this situation required no sifting through the finer points and pressing of pressed issues. As a matter of fact, she had made up her mind to forget the details of the conversation the moment he walked out her door if she could help it.

He spent 39 minutes trying to let her off easy, like she needed it. By the end he was uncomfortable because she kept her silence. There was nothing she could say that would further solidify or weaken the resignation that she felt. He asked her to say anything, that he knew he had told her it was forever and he was chickening out. He did not say sorry though. He had always believed sorries were a pitiful attempt at taking the easier road out of a difficult situation. But it did not matter. She was spent.

She nodded her head once to indicate her understanding, stood up from the edge of the chaise where she had been sitting, and kissed him on the left side of his temple like she would have if this were any regular day.

“Leave the keys on the accent table by the door. Don’t bother locking it”.

She left him on the sofa, grabbed the grocery bag she had brought home with the Chateauneuf in it, got a wine glass out a kitchen cabinet, and walked into the bedroom. Fifteen minutes later, she heard the door shut quietly. It would have been better if he had just left without trying for goodbye

Prose et Poesie