Forced expression, fails to meet.
A truly expansive day.
Early afternoon, I witnessed four friends valiantly attempt the Gallon Challenge. Noble efforts, all of them, with quite the highlight reel of epic moments. Without, of course, anyone crossing the finish line and managing to keep the milk down for a full minute as agreed upon earlier.
Then the evening was spent with several colleagues at the Sunken Garden Poetry Festival where we were privileged to hear from some local poets and newly-appointed U.S. Poet Laureate Natasha Trethewey. Garden hedges obstructed my view for much of the night, but I could see the sun set above me, bleeding pink and gold across the eraser-mark clouds while around me, middle-agers and recent college graduates sipped their wine and beer and whispered to each other in brief bursts that punctuated chasms of reverent silence.
During the drive there and back, we skirted, on the highway, exits that would have taken us in no time at all to my old neighborhood in New Britain and my more recent home in Newington. Proximity to home and even the memories attached to the former place of residence pinched my heart. And it hurt. Not like a shot from a needle or the skin caught between malicious fingers, but rather the brief breathlessness caused by someone hugging you too tightly.
Early afternoon, I witnessed four friends valiantly attempt the Gallon Challenge. Noble efforts, all of them, with quite the highlight reel of epic moments. Without, of course, anyone crossing the finish line and managing to keep the milk down for a full minute as agreed upon earlier.
Then the evening was spent with several colleagues at the Sunken Garden Poetry Festival where we were privileged to hear from some local poets and newly-appointed U.S. Poet Laureate Natasha Trethewey. Garden hedges obstructed my view for much of the night, but I could see the sun set above me, bleeding pink and gold across the eraser-mark clouds while around me, middle-agers and recent college graduates sipped their wine and beer and whispered to each other in brief bursts that punctuated chasms of reverent silence.
During the drive there and back, we skirted, on the highway, exits that would have taken us in no time at all to my old neighborhood in New Britain and my more recent home in Newington. Proximity to home and even the memories attached to the former place of residence pinched my heart. And it hurt. Not like a shot from a needle or the skin caught between malicious fingers, but rather the brief breathlessness caused by someone hugging you too tightly.