The Smell of Roses on Them Sheets

Just turned on a mix of "Folk and Acoustic," says the streaming service. I want music now. Thank goodness that is the thing I reach for. I really wish that RCA cable would hurry up and come in so that I can listen to record with the snaps and pops and the necessity to get up and flip it, preferably on 180 gram because my hands like the weight. I wish that I could find the words to be properly appreciative for how I got this receiver after mine gave up the ghost when I moved. My ex-husband bought me that one, so it's only appropriate that I give it up as I leave our home. Less sage needed. Equally appropriate that something that feels so comfortable brought me a replacement, despite the labor involved to get it working. I can't wait to lay on this beautiful galaxy of fluffy rug and listen. I only hope I can be patient and wait to not be alone for it. The gifter should bear witness.

I have not been eating or sleeping enough. Or, not eating and sleeping the way to which I've become accustomed. But I can't stop writing. And it's not depressed writing. I'm not writing myself out of a hole. I'm writing like breathing again. Gasping for the words. I want to pause this state and hold on and stay right exactly where I am. I know I can't, but fuck, I wish I could.

I'm sure this time and space make us both better writers. I see that so clearly. Twenty years will take that clarity and step all over it. It just hit me like a ton of bricks that the number means that we were so close chronologically in our paths. I met Jay in 2006. February? March? No blame, just that "you're forcing yourself into what I've already been through" and watching from the other side and getting the perspective I never even wanted. I wonder if I'll be more patient and more confident in what I am and what I have. I guess I'd like to sing backup to "Cake and Beer" and hoping that's the title that settles. I'm still trying to pick out the meaning of "silver tongue" in this case and I just don't know for sure. That was all the musical use I ever was, really: backup vocals. It seems so unfair that the one thing I always wanted more than anything is the one artistic thing I absolutely fail at. But maybe I'm supposed to be the listener, the patron, maybe the editor. The "eyes as big as stars."

I love and hate how writing evokes things that I didn't mentally slow down long enough to consider. 2005 was a red letter year for us both, I think. I became a mother. I think of the way marriage froze me and my perception has swung hard. And my patience and empathy stretched out. Which is probably trouble on legs.

This feeling scares the hell out of me. It has since that day in 2008 that ended in a rope and and exposed beam and "no, baby, no, baby, no" until my head spun and my dusty, faded, black jeans collapsed with my legs in them. I don't think I've felt this way since and I can't even speak it, despite wanting to because there's enough age and experience on me now to know that this cannot possibly end well. It never does.

I just realized I lied earlier today. I didn't mean to. It's been a long time and I've shut down so much to save my mind. That blue shirt the color of a perfect sky, phthalo blue with the touch of liquid white, a torn pocket that didn't matter then and matters less hanging in my closet old enough to drive a car. But I have been written about. White chalk haiku on a wood paneled bedroom wall that spoke of winter and the warmth of me. I fell asleep looking at that poem for more days that I could count at that age. Seems like a blink now. I can still see something like ghosts of the precise downward curve of his print and the places where my fingers and then my hair smeared the words as he pressed me against them. Damn you, Jay Tate. And it feels the same. And scares me in a way I didn't have the experience to be afraid back then. I have to breathe and consider.

I bought tickets to an Iris event for Friday. Goddammit, I wish I could extend and invitation and it not just be a jab. Kids.

Oh, I'm not even sure I can publish this. Right at the heart of me. But the best things in life are. I hope that I become fearless in the way I write. In the way that I live. I can't imagine standing in a room of people and doing what I do. I don't have the courage. "I always had the words but they don't quite know where to go." I never could stand in a room of people and be my authentic self and I can't tell if that's normal and people just lie about it or if I'm just exceptionally chicken shit. And my whole heart will always be with those who can and I will sacrifice myself on the alter to that kind of art.

I'm floating in the flu shot fever, frankly. Look, alliteration. Technically sound. I want to go back. And not for that stupid "Professional Writing" Masters. I want the one I've always wanted. The only thing stopping me is fear. I wonder if it will be the same as the last degree I earned that made me feel like being Southern and also a woman wasn't a death sentence for my voice. I thought the Southern voice was Faulkner and candidly, he hated women. I found Zora Neale Hurston and Robert Penn Warren far too late to save me from thinking I could never have a place in the canon. I wonder if it can possibly hold that gravity and change me so profoundly. A month ago, I'd have said "no way," but I feel changed since then. Wake it all up. Or wake up. Whew.

I'm going to post. And maybe not share it out there broadly to the public, but I definitely want at least one person to see this. It really seems necessary as I sit here wishing that I were drinking this beer in bed and listening to these songs on YouTube in a place that feels as safe as I ever have. Safe with an undeniable warmth. I don't understand it and I may still run. It's who I am. I feel something and then I panic like a spooked appaloosa and freak out, kicking and bucking before I run. 

Time is all that remains.