This started off as stream-of-consciousness writing to my shrink, and I'd like to be able to turn it into something more precise and focused, but my mind, for months, has been unable to think in a precise, focused way. So rather than pretend to myself that someday soon I'll tighten it into "real" writing, I'm just going to post it now.

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Thursday, March 10, 2016

When the event occurs in my shrink's office, there are rarely words. Often there aren't even thoughts that I try and fail to put words to. There's just a -need-. Not a need for a certain thing - or not a thing I am aware of - just that I need something, something I don't have, perhaps something that doesn't exist in the ( Read more... )

[This is the novel about the single mother of Sam, who is 7 years old in this scene. It's already established (or will be once more of those scenes are written) that he's musically gifted. Prior to this scene, he was trying to learn to play violin, but his 7-year-old dexterity couldn't keep up with his perfectionism; he couldn't stand the sound ( Read more... )

This is the first letter I have received from my mother in the last three years.  I'd written her three times.  I haven't phoned in that time, except to call and ask if there was a family history of heart arrhythmia, because my doctor wanted to know.  She has phoned me once, to tell me my aunt, her sister, had died; she called me about two weeks ( Read more... )

When there's no one else to do it, and I "do the buildings" at work, it means I leave the post office at 3:45 p.m., grab the few pieces of mail in a small drop and put them in a nearby blue bin, then walk a block and a half to the JFK federal building; I collect and sort mail there for 10-15 minutes, then head to the O'Neill federal building at ( Read more... )

When I got out of the car at the cat shelter where my friend and I volunteer, there was a dragonfly on the ground. My favorite insect. One of her wings was… it was beyond bent, folded in half near the middle of the wing. She was on her back, moving slightly. I put my hand down and she held onto my finger, so I lifted her to look, and to see how ( Read more... )

I started working with Precious almost two years ago at the shelter "tricking" her into realizing that petting was awesome; before that, she'd been there three years, and a few people occasionally "petted" her with a brush, but I don't know that even that happened that often. When I started working with her, I began by brushing, and learned that ( Read more... )

Maybe I'm thinking about this only because many of the people I've met through my writing workshop are trans or gender-fluid, and I'm a copycat. Maybe I'm thinking about it because I never had the framework to question before. I still don't, really; I'm not sure how to ask the questions I want to ask - especially of friends who've never ( Read more... )

Two weeks ago, the prompt in my writing workshop was a poem, Nate Klug's "Squirrels." It led me to write the following poem:

This is my mind today,
squirrels in the corner of its eye,
joyous squirrels but also wasps,
the wisp of grass on the ankle
is mistaken for ominous,
the ankle jerking upward to
meet the smack of the palm
before I realize there is
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V. has been one of my co-workers since I started this shift in September. Not just someone I worked with, but part of a kind of group of four of us; we partnered with each other - though usually she partnered with Jonathan - sat together in the break room, teased and picked and made juvenile off-color comments. One slow day, we had a rubber-band ( Read more... )