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Wednesday, November 9, 2011

I Like

Violins playing on hard wood floors.
Pretty girls in leg warmers.
Flat bread with drizzles.
Superstitions.
Kleenex with lotion squirts.
Diamonds.
Muddy hand prints.
Paint.
Hugs from people who know how to poach eggs.
Book stores that sell coffee.
Trips.
Suite cases with combination locks.
Three legged cats.
White musk.
Keys turning in doors.
Chapped lips.
Bundles of wheat help together with bright red yarn.
Kind eyes.

~I have seen at least three of these things today. I don't mind the cold front.

Hats,
Skin & Toast

Monday, November 7, 2011

Dear Dr. UnRooley,

I know you have two daughters.
You talked about them all the time.
It was awesome.
"Your girls."

But, I have to tell you, no matter how much you've sacrificed.

There are days when after an uneventful day at work,
You stop at the grocery for three bottles of your favorite water,
One jar of banana peppers,
And a box of dried kale.
There are days when you pray to the self check out contraption.
When you sit on the El platform for an hour,
Watching half a dozen trains go by, perfectly accessible trains that you can't seem to board,
Rather sit on the bench.
And when you finally do decide on a train, you sit all the way in the back,
With the candy wrappers, and the backwards motion,
And,
You have a wonderful conversation on your smart phone with your step mother,


And you feel you are in the throws of happiness.
But, your landlord hasn't yet kicked on tonight's furnace, and
You can't find the space heater,
And everything tastes bad, and none of the Cd's are in the right jewel case,
And you can't sit in one place for more then five minutes because your jeans are too thick, and You're sick of your home and you want to go home.
Just for a night.
You want somebody to fill the fridge with your favorite snacks.
And have just the thing that you want waiting for you on your old bedroom floor.
A new printer.
That sweater in the window of the Anthropologie that's across from your restaurant.
Stupid Lakeview.
And she'll tell you how pretty you look.
And she'll put on your favorite episode of John Laurequette.
And you'll fall asleep to your old petty desires and wake up forgetting all that you are and all that you have.





But, you can't. You just can't. (Sally Field is screaming in a cemetery).
"She never could!"











So,
You dig the green and yellow striped blanket out from under the radiator.

And you just want your mom.
Nothing else will do.





Sorry Rooley,
Skin

Wednesday, November 2, 2011

If We Could Talk About Me For a Second,


I have a mole on my back,
Just below my left shoulder blade.
Well, it could be a birth mark.
Because its not raised, I can't smooch it between my fingers like I can the ones on my neck.
Its light brown, like coffee with too much skim milk.
I know from my many trips to the derm that it is in no way cancer.
And I've had it as long as I've been able to reach my neck over the front of my medicine chest.
And its never bothered me before.
Until now.
This transitional time.
I can't stop thinking about it.
I feel like there are twinkling Christmas lights all around it.
It is a perfect circle by the way.
Not fetus shaped like normal back moles.
Its a stamp.
Plop.
A glaring perfect imperfection.
An eye sore.
A heir lip on a middle ton.
So, I just thought I'd tell you.
So that you know.
So its not a surprise.
So we can all eat plenty of frankincense that day.
So we can get our minds out of our bra straps and play nice.

Skin, Toast, Nooks, Crannies.