Last week (I know, two posts in one month, look at me overachieving like an overachiever!) I posted about the general emotional state of where I was at, but for some of you (cough cough Bath cough) that's just not good enough, no, you want a laundry list of what I've been up to this summer.
And I was gonna post it too, in all its boring glory (it involves a lot of talking about how hollow books are actually a super pain in the ass to make and I don't recommend anyone ever in the entirety of their life deciding to create THIRTY OF THEM as centerpieces for a wedding, also if I ever see modgepodge or an Xacto knife again before I'm ninety years old it will be too soon) but then I realized that today is September 11th and while I'm not held hostage to the tragedy of it anymore and I do my best to ignore the way it's been politicized by both parties, it felt weird to be like, "Today is September 11th! Here is how my wedding is coming along!"
So instead, I'm posting a poem, and then I'm packing my boots and my swiss army knife and my sleeping bag and my sunblock and an obscene amount of marshmallows and my family into three cars and we are driving up to Yosemite. And everything will be restored and I will take deep breaths and surer steps and yes, I will avoid the Plague Mice and maybe when I come back it won't be 100 degrees in LA and THEN I will post about the boring laundry list of what I've been up to this summer.
Have a wonderful week, everyone.
milk inside | Sarah Wetzel
I wake, having lost track
of the hours, a woman in the seat
next to me weeping
delicately, the thin
blue current of her shoulders
almost indistinguishable
from the shudders of the plane.
I’m not usually like this, she says,
shifting eyes from mine
to the window. I tell her, At times
we are all like this, turning
to the book in my lap.
What I want to tell her is
Stop. I’ve grown so impatient
with misery. In the book, a man
descends thirty-six thousand feet
below sea level to stare
at the deepest spot of the world.
Through his tiny portal cracking
under the enormous pressure
of ocean, he says the snuff-colored
ooze at the bottom resembles
a big bowl of milk. We think
we know misery
yet can’t speak eloquently
of even such a visible chasm.
Inside this plane nothing happens.
We are hundreds of miles
off course, our shape we recognize
only by the shadow
following. The woman stares out
the window, waiting for something
that won’t come. She rises
then sits back down.
What I mean to tell her is
Keep going.
of the hours, a woman in the seat
next to me weeping
delicately, the thin
blue current of her shoulders
almost indistinguishable
from the shudders of the plane.
I’m not usually like this, she says,
shifting eyes from mine
to the window. I tell her, At times
we are all like this, turning
to the book in my lap.
What I want to tell her is
Stop. I’ve grown so impatient
with misery. In the book, a man
descends thirty-six thousand feet
below sea level to stare
at the deepest spot of the world.
Through his tiny portal cracking
under the enormous pressure
of ocean, he says the snuff-colored
ooze at the bottom resembles
a big bowl of milk. We think
we know misery
yet can’t speak eloquently
of even such a visible chasm.
Inside this plane nothing happens.
We are hundreds of miles
off course, our shape we recognize
only by the shadow
following. The woman stares out
the window, waiting for something
that won’t come. She rises
then sits back down.
What I mean to tell her is
Keep going.
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