i'm just going to shut up now and read some emily dickinson

I died for Beauty - but was scarce
Adjusted in the Tomb
When One who died for Truth, was lain
In an adjoining Room -

He questioned softly, "Why I failed"?
"For Beauty," I replied -
"And I - for Truth - Themself are One -
We Brethren, are," He said -

And so, as Kinsmen, met a Night -
We talked between the Rooms -
Until the Moss had reached our lips -
And covered up - our names -

1862

the estimable Estlin and i

in brief

I'm in Illinois. This summer has flown by. At the beginning of July, my aunt Patricia died. All through July and the beginning of August I wandered around the foothills with my alcoholic friends, this kid from Missouri and a girl from my high school in particular, smoking Reds and trading music. I fought with my boyfriend over the phone all the time.

Then on August 10th, my parents and I packed the car and started driving. Las Vegas, Bryce Canyon, Moab, Denver, west Texas, Dallas, south-east Missouri, then here. All kinds of things in my head quieted down. Driving through the desert, through the mesas and the mountains. Staying in my great-aunt Georgia's house, where she and my mother's mother grew up. I went on a few long walks with my dad, talking over everything that's been going on.

Now I'm in the middle of the cornfields, right at the edge of town, getting ready for classes starting tomorrow - children's literature, youth services librarianship, communities and libraries, information organization, poetry, all spread through the week. My parents just left this morning; they spent the last few days helping me put together my apartment. My dad surprised me with a beautiful poster - it's that photograph of Audrey Hepburn with the Roman Holiday haircut. He said when he saw it in the store, he couldn't walk out without getting it for me. I'm adopting a cat - Estlin - who I can pick up from the shelter on Tuesday. She's a gray tabby with tufty ears and she likes ping-pong balls. When we went to the pet store to pick up food and a litter box, my mom nearly filled the basket with toys.
"From grandma," she said.

There are thunderstorms here that knock out the power. I'm hoping I find people I like in my classes, hoping that I fit into the meetings here the way I fit in at home.

what is left

You know that scene in the hospital dramas where the stoic but sad-faced doctor tells the patient and their family--There's nothing more we can do? And usually in the show, the patient is stone-faced and strong, and the family fall about weeping and begging? You know that scene?

Over dinner tonight my mother told me that my father's sister has been told--There's nothing more we can do. My parents got the news over a telephone call; my aunt and the rest of our family live in Dallas. Since the beginning of June, the cancer in her has grown, pushed its spider hands farther and farther and there is nothing more they can do.

I have been eating my anxiety: pints of ice cream, trays of brownies, fistfuls of grapes, bags of sugared almonds, illicit, late-night drive-through french fries, crackers smeared with peanut butter, whole bars of thick milk chocolate. I've also been buying books. I buy heavy paperbacks whose heft seems like a promise. I pray that my cousins can feel my love.

When she dies, we will find out in a phone call. A phone call. I wish somehow that I could reach into my cousins, my grandparents, my father, that I could reach into them and pull out the pain (I imagine it is a surprisingly soft thing, warm) and hold it for a while.

storytellers

Now, on a worn couch, I am reading aloud to a friend:
my favorite poems, a passage from Anna Karenina,
a collection of short stories from Southern writers.

She pours hot water onto tea leaves in our mugs.
The steam rises over her face. This was
how I spent my childhood.

Listening. Reading. Words like
drops of amber, like growing pearls, like wet clay.
On the table of my elementary school library:

glazed pastries and green tea,
word games, lessons in character voices.
My mother reads to her tired father

and he laughs, then catches his breath.
A poet smiles at her husband in the audience,
reading a love poem to a crowd.

If you were deaf, I would read to you with
my hands in your hands.
Words outloud, words we feel.

My friend finds a bookmarked page,
says to me that this is her favorite part of the book,
the part where Tereza dreams.

When I was a child, my father read me
the best of 20th century sci-fi; I closed my eyes.
I went flying into space.

A mother reads to her son
to chase away the nightmares; she keeps reading
even after he has fallen asleep, just in case.

These words are not mine

but I’d like to share them anyway.

sleeping patterns

sometimes i decide the day
should be over, so i go to sleep
at 8 or 9
and wake up the next day at 5
and bike to starbucks
and drink too much coffee
and get many things done

sometimes i get the urge

to cut off all my hair
to stop reading email, forever
to run away to the mountains
to stop using electricity
to eat everything in my fridge,
including at least a pound
of cheddar cheese
to stay up late
to pray for rain
to buy five-hundred dollar Frye boots
and one of those indoor composters
to scrub off my make up
all the lotions and hair gunk
and walk around naked
to make BIG art
to take up room