Ten.Eight
1. 4:07 am and there is nothing but moonlight.
2. 5:03 am and now the moon clings to the horizon. It is low and glowing orange and I want to stare at it instead of the road.
3. I always forget how vast and wide this world is until I take myself out past the edges of what I know.
4. This whole morning is a journey past an edge.
5. There are sounds that you hear only during these sacred early hours. There is so much life that goes unnoticed in the bright waking hours.
6. She is pure light.
7. This is the good kind of exhaustion.
8. On the return home I see the powder blue four-square with its American flag. I try to recall the last time I drove through a two-stop-sign kind of town. I want to stop and take a picture with the barn and its grayed-out wood. I wish I could pull over and steal a handful of wheat, all golden and brown.
9. I want to know this landscape intimately. So that when I step out into it, it is less of an intrusion and more of a communion.
10. Gelato, please.
Ten.Seven
1. The deer are back again and the fawn is sturdy on her feet. We lock eyes, the three of us (mama, baby, and me), and stand still until we finally resume our work. They continue to graze and I drag the hoses.
2. The gentle way in which the air blows at the hem of my dress.
3. The clouds look like halos.
4. I am so very tired.
5. The smell of frankincense and myrrh fills the room as I move the vacuum back and forth. Why is it that the act of cleaning feels so holy to me?
6. I pick the dandelion weeds without gloves and so sometimes, when I'm not careful, my fingertips ache from the prickles.
7. It is the thoughtfulness of the gift that brings me to tears.
8. I've always judged myself for the ways in which I am so thoughtless. And as I write this right now I realize that the best gift I can give is that of my words.
9. The air is still moving.
10. Sometimes the light looks best through dirty glass.
Ten.Six
1. I am the only one awake.
2. There is something about the the height of the grass that makes me high-step through it as I drag the hoses.
3. The recycling truck is always first and it is the crashing of glass that greets me this morning.
4. Five baby tomatoes, soft yellow and pale green.
5. The scent of peppermint, oregano, and sage. I promise them that this time I will keep them alive. I finger the dried-out leaves of the potted hydrangea and reveal the new growth below. When does nature know to quit?
6. It is the whiteness of the walls, I think. How the whiteness is so expansive. I am uncomfortable.
7. I think again about the words I said to them last night: "I have to focus on the ways in which I can cultivate joy for myself."
8. Goodbyes. I am surprised by my sadness.
9. The dusty but rich color of the strand of dried rosebuds.
10. I am still the only one awake.
Ten.Four
1. How I wonder why I'm awake so early, at the first light, before the alarm. Before I'm fully rested.
2. I watch the videos I took on my phone of last night's fireworks, remembering the time we stopped in Arcola, Illinois and stood in the Dairy Queen parking lot, bones vibrating and ears ringing from the booms.
3. The sparrow is back again. Flying in frightened circles again. This must be a sign.
4. The sway of the tall grass on the berm.
5. My inability to make a conclusion is frustrating.
6. Circles.
7. The struggle to articulate the fullness of the situation.
8. We say the same things over and over.
9. Why are we here again, doing this again, saying this again, wishing for this again?
10. I watch myself stand outside the loop.
Ten.Three
1. Train horns at 5:33 a.m. Long and drawn out.
2. How many different way can I describe the density of air? It is milky, thick, heavy, syrupy, sticky, unmoving.
3. Mam and baby dear: the way they both turn toward me when I slide open the door, heads up, ears perked before they resume grazing.
4. Cigarette smoke: the way it lingers long after the last drag.
5. Wet grass.
6. The collapse into cool, white sheets.
7. The way writing on this piece of hotel stationery evokes the smell of bergamot and lavender and rain.
8. Sawdust. Varnish. The sound of the power washer against thin metal.
9. The thinness of the air.
10. Smears of black ink.
Ten.Two
1. The fog rising off the tall grass is thick and orange-hued.
2. Why is it that we scrub ourselves clean beyond recognition? Who do we think we are fooling?
3. The coffee tastes bitter and burnt but I drink it anyway because this is ritual and sometimes we forsake soul-sense in devotion of habit.
4. Milky air.
5. I am not breathing.
6. I hold my breath too much.
7. The way he is more himself when we are alone: head tilted, limbs so long and lean and folded over.
8. My skin is damp. Dewey. I am my own ecosystem.
9. There is a car up ahead whose taillights look like sirens. How the sight of what might be sirens makes me hold my breath.
10. I hold my breath too much.
Ten.One
1. A little black sparrow flew in frightened circles in front of the alcove this morning.
2. It's been 4 weeks since he last saw the barber and now the hairs, golden and brown, are curling around his temples and along his forehead.
3. The way his hands move in front of him when he beings to talk. It's one of the reasons I love him: His passion is never as quiet and unassuming as mine.
4. What is it? That sound of blade against wood? Rhythmic thuds.
5. A reflection of myself: shoulders curved too far forward and a neck bent to an unnatural degree. I am leaning into myself. Or am I curling away from someone or something?
6. The angles of light in this house and the way we walk in and out of the shadows.
7. There are not enough trees on our property to break up the wind and the small green leaves of the pepper plant whip back and forth.
8. Tenderness in the breast. First the left and now the right, and how I think about the cancer in my grandmother and my aunt and how I try to always convince myself that this tenderness is nothing.
9. Cold white sheets.
10. Fireworks boom in the distance.