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[emilyampersand]

How To Like It, by Stephen Dobyns

These are the first days of fall. The wind at evening smells of roads still to be traveled, while the sound of leaves blowing across the lawns is like an unsettled feeling in the blood, the desire to get in a car and just keep driving. A man and a dog descend their front steps. The dog says, Let's go downtown and get crazy drunk. Let's tip over all the trash cans we can find. This is how dogs deal with the prospect of change. But in his sense of the season, the man is struck by the oppressiveness of his past, how his memories which were shifting and fluid have grown more solid until it seems he can see remembered faces caught up among the dark places in the trees. The dog says, Let's pick up some girls and just rip off their clothes. Let's dig holes everywhere. Above his house, the man notices wisps of cloud crossing the face of the moon. Like in a movie, he says to himself, a movie about a person leaving on a journey. He looks down the street to the hills outside of town and finds the cut where the road heads north. He thinks of driving on that road and the dusty smell of the car heater, which hasn't been used since last winter. The dog says, Let's go down to the diner and sniff people's legs. Let's stuff ourselves on burgers. In the man's mind, the road is empty and dark. Pine trees press down to the edge of the shoulder, where the eyes of animals, fixed in his headlights, shine like small cautions against the night. Sometimes a passing truck makes his whole car shake. The dog says, Let's go to sleep. Let's lie down by the fire and put our tails over our noses. But the man wants to drive all night, crossing one state line after another, and never stop until the sun creeps into his rearview mirror. Then he'll pull over and rest awhile before starting again, and at dusk he'll crest a hill and there, filling a valley, will be the lights of a city entirely new to him. But the dog says, Let's just go back inside. Let's not do anything tonight. So they walk back up the sidewalk to the front steps. How is it possible to want so many things and still want nothing. The man wants to sleep and wants to hit his head again and again against a wall. Why is it all so difficult? But the dog says, Let's go make a sandwich. Let's make the tallest sandwich anyone's ever seen. And that's what they do and that's where the man's wife finds him, staring into the refrigerator as if into the place where the answers are kept- the ones telling why you get up in the morning and how it is possible to sleep at night, answers to what comes next and how to like it.

[emilyampersand]

“My journey is not your journey.” 🌸 I’m struggling lately with this mantra. I’m struggling to accept that my brain is wired differently & that doesn’t make me broken but it does make it a different experience for me to walk through this world. #sundaythoughts #vulnerability https://www.instagram.com/p/B0v1U_khEDU/?igshid=1avor0jpwmas7

[emilyampersand]

The Peel of an Orange (& After the Wreckage)

When I was nineteen, I got a tattoo of an ampersand on my left wrist.

It represents my love for language, I said. But, really, it was to impress an old boyfriend

who was my first big-L love. When we kissed, it tasted like cheap aftershave and cinnamon.

He was also the first to peel back my layers like an orange, squeeze me until spent.

                             (I swear I said no, didn’t I?)

Later, I called a friend to tell her; used words like: exciting, erotic, passionate!

Because the other word didn’t seem true. The other word was too sharp to bite down on.

                              (Wasn’t it partly my fault?)

It has taken me fourteen years to say the other word out loud. To re-capture my flag and plant it

back onto land that still belongs to me. Even after the wreckage, I still belong to me.

                              (Why did I wait so long?)

Now, my tattoo means something different; it means there is space to build something different after the wreckage.

And I – my own greatest rival – am no longer content with living on one side of my ampersand.

[emilyampersand]

My own archipelago

In elementary school, I learned  a collection of islands is called an archipelago. I liked the weight of the word— 

the way my mouth wrapped around each syllable like a marble: Ar-chi-pel-a-go. 

I thought it beautiful, collecting islands. Not stamps, not rocks, not coins. Islands. 

I imagined the magma escaping from the sea, triumphant. Shaking its fist at the erupting volcano. 

I imagined the newborn island beaming as inhabitants took up residence on its surface— fulfilled, significant, no longer buried. 

I imagined becoming an island, myself. Finding my collection, my like-minded ar-chi-pel-a-go. Maybe, then, I’d be brave enough to crest the waves— let others see me, above the tideline.

[emilyampersand]

February, 1989

Tonight, I opened an old photo album  given to me by my father. It was my grandmother’s. At 87, her memories have been excavated. Nothing exists for her, on either side of now. 

In one photo, snow covers the ground. On the back, my grandmother’s familiar scrawl: “Kent and his daughters, February 1989” 

My father is holding a snowball, smiling. Behind him, my sister and I also smile. We are bundled, head to toe. Cared for, warm. Embracing a moment together. 

In another photo, my mother. Same snow, same day. She looks beautiful in profile, smiling against a backdrop of pine trees and a blue winter sky. 

I want to remember, the day. The feeling.  The way we all embraced joy. I want to remember my grandmother capturing it all, making it feel significant. 

When, really, it was just a moment.

[emilyampersand]

Last night, I put on some lipstick and fancy earrings and met some good friends out for a fundraising event planned by one of my best friends. Being in my thirties is kind of alright. ✨ https://www.instagram.com/p/Bv9TzvsF-qG/?utm_source=ig_tumblr_share&igshid=1gguvqagbexz

[emilyampersand]

Driving away from my childhood home, at night.

This unlit road, a sacrament to my past.  Every bend and curve; my body, my bread. “Watch for deer,” my mother had warned. For a moment, I was seventeen again. The years spent building my own ecosystem dissolving with the sinking sun. I am driving toward my home in the city; miles between me and its atomic glow. Fireflies fleck my windshield; illumine, then fade. Out here, a summer night feels holy when you press it against your chest. Now, my religion is my daily practice of gazing into the life of my neighbor through my kitchen window.

[emilyampersand]

The peel of a lemon

That delicate flavor,  wasted daily. The rind could be grated, sprinkled with sugar. Put inside a glass jar, saved for future use. If a girl— Hazel or Iris or (if plucky) Faye.  Fruit of imaginary labor.  Kept in a cool place,  always ready  to be used.

[emilyampersand]

Evening Glow

My favorite painting at the museum— a stark landscape with two glowing trees.

I stand inches from its thick brush strokes. Imagine putting my tongue against it. Imagine it tastes sweet, like icing. I stare, until my eyes become heavy. There is a subtle vibration to the landscape— as though the painting were a photograph taken by someone with unsteady hands.

I am driving home in the rain, at night. The yellow light vibrates on the wet pavement. My desire unhinges.

[emilyampersand]

Contemplating loss while looking outside airplane windows

You are a speck of snow that somehow survived the melt.  A girl in a red shirt with a matching red bow walks through the last remaining sunlight on an ancient brick building.  A strand of geese fly south against a blue-gray sky  There are words for this, but naming means possessing.  At this stage, it should feel a bit thicker— at least as thick as water. It should fight you as you drag through it, but it shouldn’t feel like disappearing. Like the blurring city outside my airplane window,  I have to squint really hard to feel you now.

[emilyampersand]

A Little Love Poem by Andy Weaver

Someone who hates scrabble.

Someone who sleeps on her back near an open window in winter, her breath rolling like a river into night.

Someone who wants me to wake her in the morning by reading ee cummings’ love poems, giving a small candle-flicker of a smile just before opening her eyes.

Someone who appreciates the architecture of churches, but refuses to step inside.

Someone who has hands fit to hold hurt sparrows and robins.

Someone who threw out an her Alice Cooper records when she found out he loves to golf.

Someone who would swerve a new car into the ditch to avoid a frog crossing the road.

Someone who would tattoo my name on her arm in writing the same colour as her skin, so it would appear slowly from nowhere when she suntanned, people thinking her blood was telling secrets to the world of its own accord.

Someone who learned Spanish to read Marquez, or Lorca, or Neruda.

Someone whose hips whisper their own stories of the serpent and the garden of Eden.

Someone who bites the back of my neck like a leopardess carrying her kitten to safety.

Someone who’ll make me wait for her to come out of the shower.

Someone whose smallest movements amaze me: her hair falling over her eyes, the soft swell of her hips when she ties down, a deep sigh when she sleeps.

Someone who maps every ticklish part of my body and then uses her knowledge strictly for evil.

Someone who paints our bodies black and makes love with me under the stars.

Someone who burns through my chest like that first shot of scotch.

Someone whose tongue, if we’re kept apart too long, would nervously trace my face into the roof of her mouth.

Someone who practises her signature with her wrong hand, in case of accidents or a sudden arrest.

Someone whose fingernails smell faintly of her hair.

Someone who reminds me of the soft tickle of fog.

Someone who would rush outside in the middle of the night, setting a spider onto the lawn, never admitting it’s because she hates rain.

Someone who understands the unforgivable importance of ravens.

Someone who’ll flicker into my lips with the ferocity of a dragonfly.

Someone who will open, thick, pungent and vital, like a Mapplethorpe flower.

Someone who has searched for me like a near-sighted woman groping for her glasses, stubbing her toes and swearing in Yiddish.

Someone who would understand why Steve and Dave and Paul and I sat in a bar staring at the mirror behind us for twenty minutes because somebody had asked what would happen if you looked at yourself in a mirror using a pair of binoculars unti1 we had to admit the question was too big for us, and we turned back to the safe optics of the beer bottle.

Someone who would just happen to cut my wrist shortly after reading Ondaatje’s “The Time Around Scars. ”

Someone who’ll stare softly but straight at me, smiling reassuringly when I tell her how my 73 year old Medieval lit prof looked up from Chaucer, stared blankly over the class’s heads and said that even the happiest marriage will end in death.

Someone who understands the efficiency inherent in suicide.

Someone who knows that love can be the thickest slice of hell we’ll ever taste.

Someone who would dance with me by the sides of highways

[emilyampersand]

Love her, but leave her wild.

Harper Lee, To Kill a Mockingbird (via thelovejournals)

[emilyampersand]

We’re all just out here doing our best. (at Over-The-Rhine, Ohio) https://www.instagram.com/p/BtGlyYplIij/?utm_source=ig_tumblr_share&igshid=15z2bvu4kdqhk

[emilyampersand]

Let’s talk about

The folded chair in the corner That we cannot bear to part with The cost of always Leaving your shoes outside, until They start to resemble petrified wood

How you never apologize first How the weight of pretending Not to care, has diminished me To a dull ache

The way your feet Always find mine, beneath the blankets Rough & scratchy, from years of neglect

These in-between moments With you, but without

How hard       it all is

[emilyampersand]

This photo contains three things that I love: my coffee plant, Sunday morning light, & Charley Harper. ❤️

[emilyampersand]

Defense mechanisms

I am starting to realize one of my biggest defense mechanisms is assuming people are mad at me and don’t want to talk to me. And therefore becoming reclusive and having people stop talking to me. Man. I gotta stop doing that.

[emilyampersand]

And here we see a rare sighting of an Emily Ampersand in her natural habitat.