mostly i spend time appraising the abandoned house, what it is, what it once was, what it might become and then behind me quietly existing and asking for nothing, i discover the branch with leaves and the boot. how often do we miss these things? the house seems so formidable but what of the trees that surround the house? what of the man who once walked through?
i want to put on the boot and do important work. i want to stand like a tree and be - do important work. instead i take the photograph and leave.
***
The Sweatshirt
it is 8 years since we buried my father and i am crossing a threshold, my new language rumbling, plate tectonics between my slim jaws that beg, come back and see me grow. there is a honey mustard sweatshirt in my mother's drawers. once it wore his body. could he even have begun to imagine in the meat of his mind that one day i would bud breasts and wear it? i suppose he wore it when he drank beer and smelled his strange and specific mash of aftershave and cow shit. i press baby powder scented secret into my newly stinging pits and pull on his sweatshirt, my breasts barely discernible beneath the flaking emblems on my chest. in the mirror i appraise the dull reproduction of his pale blue eyes on my own face and smile; directly through his absence i ripen.
