Sunday Haiku #12
wind blows through the pines transporting me to mountains: Colorado sky
Posts
In It Together
I am at the dentist’s office, reclined in a dental chair, about to get my teeth cleaned. She leans over my face with her arms at the ready and starts talking. I look into her eyes, through the face shield, picturing her whole face under the mask from her freckles to her smile lines; all the unique features of her face as far as I can remember them. She is telling me about pandemic life. “...and while we waited for my daughter’s COVID test results I started spiraling. I started thinking we were going to have to quarantine in the house again and I just lost it. I can’t do that again. I have PTSD from when the country shut down in March,” she tells me. I’ve never been so grateful to have her hands in my mouth during a conversation before because I don’t know what to say. Hearing people talk about their experiences with the pandemic and its effects on our lives feels surreal to me. Time and again I am struck speechless to someone’s COVID revelation. There are just so many parall...
True Confessions From My Closet
Mantra by Lisa Olivera I spent most of yesterday in the closet. Hours at a time, I sat huddled in the corner beneath the hanging clothes, my head resting against the wall. Or folded in on myself, sandwiched in the little space between piles of clutter, where I had to put a small pillow behind me to keep the clutter from poking me in the back. And once, with my back against the door, my head resting on my legs, snot dripping onto my sweats. Always with the light off. Where the idea originally came from, I don’t know. The first time, I was a child, maybe 8 years old and I slid my closet door open and crawled inside and underneath the shelf in the corner and I took my blanket and my teddy with me and I eventually fell asleep, after all my feelings were spent. It became a regular occurrence after that, crawling into the safety of a closet, in the dark where I am the only critic of my feelings and the only savior of myself. Whenever I was sad or mad or overwhelmed or ...
