A short blog today — I’m still taking some time away from the computer. These are some quiet days that we’re in the middle of, and the writing is happening differently.
This is an old write, from 2005:
The young woman with the ripped jeans at Ashby Station spitting out blood and consternation. F! asks if she need us to call help, a doctor, and she doesn’t speak — just shakes her head. Long vine streams of saliva dripping from her mouth, her legs spread wide feet flat on the ground good angle for a grand plié, if she were on her feet and moving and maybe one of the things she’s lost in moving into adolescence is her fine facility with dancing now that the thighs and belly have bulbed out with womanhood. Her hair is a straight flaxen tail at the back of her head and her face is a lovely blotch, so fresh, those cheeks, with a redness that promises acne that hasn’t yet appeared. And between her feet a pool of spit that slowly reddened from blood or food coloring, we don’t know which — it doesn’t really matter, ’cause all she needs is attention, gone so long she can’t even make eye contact. It’d be a long haul back to keeping her spit in her mouth. She’s slapped at home for speaking or someone is or she’s encouraged to do altogether too much with her mouth and for too long. She sits alone, waiting for somebody to give her a chance at waiting for her dreams, too. She’s not even anxious on the outside. Just a cauterized wound.
Keep writing. Take the space you need. Be easy with your hearts — and I’ll practice doing the same.
