The little boy and I had our second lesson last night. I'd had this sick feeling more than before the first one, this time having no time to be ready. We got through it somehow. I don't know which of us is having a harder time, equal suffering I expect. We're not sure if we like each other yet. But in certain ways we empathize. This obviously could be a very bad thing for his development's sake. Example: he says I hate practicing. I say, me too. Of course I don't say it out loud, I say we're almost there and he wants to know when we can go outside and I try to push a little piece of learning just one more into his ears and then slowly begin to say OK we're fin-- I'LL BEAT YOU TO THE TREE he busts through the door, is gone.

We race between them up and down the lawns while our mums talk. I wear out between the 2nd and 3rd maple after working all day and he keeps running and running and running and running. I swear he is that pink rabbit with the drum, I have him for a piano student and I can't keep up. Waiting patiently, for something quieter to click, a like a love for the sounds. For music.




-

As an aside, I have been dreaming that people are searching for me. Before these few nights I hadn't dreamed in probably about a hundred years. I don't know if they are good or bad people or why they want to find me. I just know that I don't want them to.

So alrighty then and goodbye for now. I am presently supposed to be working.

My favorite tree

It is both steady and broken, and sometimes just seeing it makes me stronger.

Jumping into the week, full scattered

Mostly everyone said I looked beautiful. They would say congratulations, because they think I am my sister. They pass me by and think I am young.

The first time we think about boys is a summer dressed Sunday, a singing in clover, a pause, wondering what color the sunlight looks through our hair. Becoming women in this place, I have wondered if we really knew what we are doing or ever will. I liked riding in his car, bass heartbeating through my skin, and that one's eager call, his clumsy hand, this one's gentle smiles, yet loving and inside loving most, the Boy with a silver hart. I am told there is a time for timing. So you do what is right and then wait, and wait. Wondering each moment if I am alone. I was a million times wrong, and we all more than we knew meant never to hurt anyone.

Under the ash tree yesterday we opened the door to Rabbit's cage. A few soft wonder steps and a lightning leap to the field, ears toward Sanctuary. Spring. Life. Timing.

I learn it through the losses.

Commencing

By now I should be asleep. S is graduating tomorrow. I am more excited than she is. I've been up and down and all over flighty inside about it for a while because I get to play the grand piano on the church stage not caring if anyone is listening or not because that's called a prelude and with preludes it doesn't matter much. Last night I rescheduled the Little Boy's lesson for next week and took a solid inch of the load off my mind. Did I tell you about him? No because I am all busyness. My head is wrapped in the busiest week of spring so far. Tomorrow I get to wear all black to somewhere that's not a funeral. Graduations are grand. I'm sleepy now and this is boring and for the first time in a while I can't wait for tomorrow. If I'm really good maybe this time I'll meet Mozart's nephew.

I am here I swear I am. I only hide.

This happened. I wanted to run away but it was too cold. There were no words for why and I wanted to know more than anyone else. I fell and found my fault and now so suddenly it's yesterday. I didn't write because there was more than could ever be said.

It feels simple that no grief comes now. It feels right to open my hand. And yet my heart is not strong so I asked, hold me. I am ready now. Let go, and go.

You don't have to understand this, the only ones who know or try are the angel of smiles, the boy who sits near me and the one who held my face in her hands. They are enough.

So. My voice still shakes. So?

It has still been raining in Missouri until today. So, so green are all of us and the rivers well from our souls. I don't care, flood me away. Here is peace now. The sun becomes perfect at 7:21 pm and I walk a little at times when there is no other thing to do which is never. I am working and working and most times in a way I can't understand I remember to be funny in the day and then comes night, I become small, see golden things. Transude brokenness, drifts of sunlight in my soul and how uncertain it is to have so little sadness.

Secret

In one hour I am giving a very first piano lesson to a little boy. He is only six and I'm scared to death.

Flash wants you to know

Even though his human has been so neglectful in writing about him, he is still here, and as things brighten he waits to stick his slighted nose back in at any time.

Mercy's tears

I have tried to write what it was and why. I will try again even though I don't know how and may never fully find it. But it is simpler than all that I have in words, because it is written on each of us in no English, deeper than the mind or heart and the only way to share is to speak it quietly inside to each other as small children speak with their eyes. It is about the times we make ourselves lost. When we wander with crippled feet trying again and again and again to run farther away, clawing at earth to find old rags to try to pull them back on. When hands become tools of desperation and our eyes are stricken with what we see, no longer under the shelters given to us from our Birth and it is about the coming of doubts like crawling things, fear that freezes and grief in every breath that chokes before it starts and then it is sorrow and finally a breaking comes. Enough pain to bring us to our knees and become silent, to empty our hands and listen. It is about knowing a father and great kindness. And it is in every part about believing that his spirit is stronger than pain and that he heals my sicknesses and that every time it comes I can fight it, never alone.

To whom it concerns

I once was lost.

Now I am found.

Eventually I will know how to write about what came in between.

I took a walk down to the river

to lay my burdens down.