2. actually, a short story
Rules for Virgins — Amy Tan

3.
The Hour I First Believed — Wally Lamb

4.
Blood, Bones, & Butter — Gabrielle Hamilton

5. from the book exchange at the hotel while on vacation, forgive me
Remember Me — Mary Higgins Clark
Shanghai Girls — Lisa See

6. stunning. absolutely stunning.
Run — Ann Patchett
Bel Cant0 — Ann Patchett

7. fascinating & upsetting; makes me anxious about possibly adopting
Finding Fernanda — Erin Seigal

8.
assorted magazines, including, finally, last year’s fiction issue of the New Yorker

9. regularly
the Times,  although the political climate is making my heart hurt & my skin crawl

10. any day I have any time alone at home
a poem or two from whatever page I happen to open to from whatever book I’ve picked, eyes closed, from the line of books of poetry

I bring a hand towel into the tub with me. I keep a towel by the tub to dry my hands, but I soak the hand towel & lay it across my body. I like to cover my stomach. I like to watch the wet towel move with my breathing. I watch the line of my stomach. I try not to think about the difference between a curve & a flat line, but I’m a girl, or I’m a woman, & I was raised where I was raised, & I was raised by the people I was raised by. If I have to think, I try not to judge. I am trying to be gentle with myself. (1)

I stayed in this motel exactly two years ago. (2)

My mother had cancer. We didn’t know how bad it would be; we were readying ourselves. I cried for three hours after leaving the city. The tears stopped somewhere in Pennsylvania, when I stopped to buy coffee. I had operated like this since the diagnosis: I could cry, deep sobs that made my stomach hurt, that rocked my body, that turned my shoulders inward so tightly that the muscles never quite stopped aching, for hours, until something would require me to be functional again. I had to sublet my room. I had to put in notice at my job. I had to answer the telephone, I had to enter the dates of surgeries & appointments on my calendar. I could stop crying to do these things, but I didn’t know when it would start again. I was bad weather, all summer thunderstorms coming on sudden & hard, the world seen in an ugly green light. (3)

I stopped for the night, wrote a letter, & realized that I was in love. I hadn’t quite understood, before. Sometimes a crisis muddies the waters, but sometimes it is clarity. (4)

I took a bath that night, the same bath I always take. (5)

I like the anonymity of these rooms. I prefer hotels with someone else; I prefer motels by myself. I like thin, crisp sheets bleached white. I like an empty bed to look over at. I do not have a rule about the left bed or the right one; if I have a habit, I’ve never noticed. Tonight, the beds are on the left wall; last time, they were on the right. Both times, I slept in the left bed. When I drove from Los Angeles back to Brooklyn, I kept sleeping in the right-side beds. It was something about her, but I don’t remember why.

I like spreading my belongings on the empty bed. I like fucking up the sheets. I like my bath, always the same, even in summer. I like to write in motel rooms– hotel rooms, too. & I like to get off. The blank canvas quality is good for both of these things. (6)

The clerk didn’t remember me. I remembered him. I remember such useless things: the location of the ice machine, the ugly print of the bedspreads, that the little soaps in the bathroom are squares instead of rectangles. I remembered the exit number, which wasn’t useless. I counted down miles. I turned off the highway. I bought a pack of cigarettes at a gas station, but left the cellophane on. I paid eighty dollars for two queen-sized beds in a non-smoking room. I ran a bath. (7)

I said goodnight, all the way from Ohio. (8)

B. an incomplete list of things to be completed:
a painting of you on a pony on a boat; a card that I don’t quite know how to write; a postcard I keep meaning to send but asking for an address feels too difficult; the restoration of a small square heart; a mixtape; a conversation; several promises; a list we made (do you still have it?); a solution to that box of objects that don’t belong here anymore; four books that I said I’d read; fourteen books that I’d really prefer to be reading**; several promises***.

C. I had a dream that I had to fill all of the legal pads in the world with lists, but it wasn’t a bad dream at all. The lists could be about anything. Not all of the legal pads were yellow; some were that blue that I love, & some were pink & lilac & white. It looked like Easter, & the man in the dream said he thought things would take about eight or nine years. It felt like the best job I could’ve been given.

* This isn’t to say that I haven’t been writing, because I have. I am feeling resentful of commitments, which is ridiculous, since they were commitments I was happy to make. Suddenly, given deadlines for this word or that one, I can dream up five or six projects that aren’t about language at all. There is a photograph I have been meaning to take. I know what to do with thirteen of those boxes I’ve been keeping; I just need another old paned window.

** realistically, more like fourteen hundred books I’d prefer to be reading. I do not have enough time or bookshelves, & I have a lot of both. Let’s admit it: this is all about words. It always is. I always am.

*** I don’t resent these. I am taking my time. I believe in being thorough.

2. I can put off making a telephone call for days, if I need to. I can find enough reasons (a baker’s dozen) not to look up a name, not to dial a number.

3. I feel worn. These thin places make the world feel more difficult, dangerous– & then, also, as if more light is coming in.

4. I want to talk about it* at the wrong moments. I’m not sure there are right moments.

5. I opt out of the scanner at the airport.  I disagree with it, politically, but also, I am scared of the radiation. Twice a year, my breasts are pressed flat between plates of glass, a lead apron across my hips. I have enough radiation in my life. Even the maybe of this changes things, & so I stand very still while a stranger moves her hands across my body. She seems angry with me. I feel like throwing up.

6. Sometimes, it is the first thing I touch in the morning. Sometimes, I fall asleep with it under my fingertips. It’s larger than it was. Last summer, I had to search it out. I could find it when my left arm was raised. It felt like a pea. I find it by accident, now. I don’t have to raise my arm. It feels like a marble.

7. When it is found, by accident, during sex, something in me freezes.

8. but this is not the only thing about my body.

9. The trouble with feeling worn: that I become physically temperamental. My stomach cannot be trusted with toast, my muscles cannot be trusted not to tense while I sleep, leaving me to wake up aching. Taking the subway home at night exhausts me. I sleep, & I am still tired.

but–

10. The joy with feeling worn: that what feels good feels beautiful.

11. I prefer the vulnerability I choose, but if this is where I am, I will let it be good in the ways that it can.

* all of it.

1. I can’t call it jello, or anything cute; it doesn’t make it easier. This word comes with enough baggage to merit a porter (this suitcase here, sir, & the train case on the bed), & despite the power of words & names, relabeling the feeling doesn’t do a thing.
2. It’s true: I get jealous.
3. It’s not bad or good. It just is.
4. Sometimes I am bad or good, about it.
5. I sulk for a second, wanting you to change your plans. There was some miscommunication about scheduling, & you have a date* on the only night I’m certain I’ll be free this week. I work Tuesday & Wednesday, & I don’t know why you can’t meet her then.
6. But you’re meeting her, & promise to come home by eight.
7. I tell you not to promise, & to stay if you’re having fun.
8. I mean it.
9. Right now, you’re not working evenings.
10. We could count the number of nights I’ve been out past three,–
11. but we won’t.
12. I am so frequently struck by your understanding, & by your generosity of spirit regarding how I spend my time.
13. This isn’t to say that you’re not jealous.
14. We’re standing on a corner in midtown, your hands at my waist. I don’t like him, you say, but you’re smiling at me. You lean in to kiss me exactly the way I like. You don’t have to like him. You let me like him. That’s enough.
15. I have never been given space like this.
16. It’s the strangest thing: that being allowed to openly like someone else, or kiss someone else, or fuck someone else, makes me increasingly aware of loving you**.
17. & it’s the strangest thing:  that being jealous about you getting drinks with some girl (you used the adjective pixie-ish, & god, something happened in my gut, what if she’s smart & funny & on top of that, smaller than you, little in that way you like, that makes you feel more butch, FUCK) does the same thing. Makes me aware.
18. I think about you out with her***,  & how you blush when someone is flirting with you. I think about how it makes you feel to feel appreciated, enjoyed, desired.
19. It makes me want to do nice things for you, so I go to Whole Foods to buy you pretzel rolls. We discovered them for the first time the other day, & they are delicious. The Whole Foods in Union Square is incredibly crowded, & the pretzel roll bin is empty, but I’m feeling better. I take a picture to prove I was there. This is being good, about jealousy. Owning it. Letting it make me kinder, softer towards you.
20. & then I am home.

* I am tired of semantics. Date, it is just a word.
** of loving you. of being loved by you. of how good this is, how different from anywhere I’ve been before.  of being lucky. really lucky. unbelievably so.
*** I pretend she is 5’10″.

I do love it here. I do want to stay. There are a hundred imperfections, but we’re fixing a few of them. Paint can help. Paint can elevate three years from bearable to lovely. Pick the right colors*, **. Get your landlord to agree to pay for the supplies; blow a kiss to the gods that your girlfriend worked as a house painter, & knows a little something about primer & perfect edges.

…

I didn’t mean to, but I spent an hour weeding in the backyard. There are small cuts on my hands from the grapevine that seems to have spent all winter growing in the most inconvenient ways possible: through the fence, stretching across the walk to reach the rosebushes, one long tendril snaked around the neck of the Buddha statue.

I am daydreaming, I am researching, I am making lists. There is so much to be done: soil testing, germination, eye bolts screwed into the upper deck, construction of raised beds, assembly of the compost bin. There is so much joy. I cannot stop thinking of tomatoes***.

…

You shift in your sleep, irritated that I’ve left the light on to write, but never lose contact. At the moment that you pull the pillow over your head, your body moves back towards mine. There is a freckle of white paint **** on your shoulder.

…

* the only one I can think of at the moment is sundance, for the kitchen, which we’ll finish tomorrow. The crown molding & the ceiling are some white that probably has a beautiful name. When I was 10, I wanted to be the person who named the paint colors. Sometime before then, I wanted to be my mother, or a mermaid, or both. After, I wanted to be a poet.

** I keep thinking of my birthday last year.  C gave me girl scout cookies & a selection of paint samples, all grays. I wanted to paint my bedroom something light & cool, something named dove or river rock or after the storm or Sunday morning. She was going to paint it for me, but then there was summer. It’s still aqua for now, but it’s on the list for May. Some things are worth waiting for.

*** in related news, I have been stockpiling recipes for making mozzarella.

**** eggshell? wedding dress? like a virgin? the second snow?

2. last year, I was recently single. the break-up wasn’t a clean one (as it was the first of three, that may be the understatement of the year), & I was pretty sure that contrary to what I’d previously believed, I was not actually lovable.
2a. at least not in the earth-moving sense.
2b. & I’m a little bit of a princess, when it comes down to it. if I’m going to fall for someone, I want it to be hard & mutual. (… totally intended.)
2c. I am owning my princess tendencies these days.

3. so, Valentine’s Day: I probably should’ve been full of rage. but I wasn’t!
3a. instead, I was full of picklebacks*, & surrounded by good friends.
3b. I won a raffle. one of my prizes was a plastic PBR pint glass. it’s my favorite smoothie glass.
3c. this isn’t to say I was totally blissed out (or, y’know, not devastated by aforementioned break-up), but my emotional state had nothing to do with Valentine’s Day.
3d. (although maybe a little something to do with whiskey & a photobooth.)

4. mostly, I like an excuse for a party / taco / some glitter / night out with friends / one too many picklebacks.
4a. & I like that smokin’ hot underthings with gratuitous lace will go on sale** on February 15th!

5.  so it seems that my tolerance of / affection for Valentine’s Day is that I just don’t take it very seriously.
5a. this would’ve been fine, except that since I’ve started doing yoga, I seem to be into Taking Things Seriously.
5b. I promise not to talk about my heart chakra, but I can’t pretend I don’t know the colors for it***!

6. & I have been thinking about how to make Valentine’s Day a more sincere experience for myself.
6a. tune out now if you hate feelings!

7. I decided that
7a. rather than having one valentine, I would have quite a few.
7b. & that all I had to do was think loving things about them. (not necessarily sexy things, although some of those too, where appropriate. I mean, technically, it’s the holiday of romantic love, right? I’m appropriating it for All Sorts of Love, but I’m definitely still into getting off with people I adore.)
7c. excellent plan, right?****

8. so. my valentine list includes, but is not exclusive to: my sweetheart. my mama. some cats. yoga, the studio where I take classes, my teachers.  my friends with lots of feelings. my friends who like to pretend they don’t have quite so many feelings.  my friends who are good at dancing*****. some people who’ve been gentle or awkward or kind with my heart. some people I’ll allow to remain reference-less. my valentine from last year, T. myself******.

9. now it is time for beer & cuddles.
9a. I have to say, I’m pretty happy with the state of things.

*fuck yes, brine.
**fuck yes, sale.
***fuck yes, golden green & rose pink.
****fuck yes, agreement.
*****fuck yes, all of you.
******fuck yes, self-love!