I haven't been writing much of my own stuff as of late, but I keep coming across all of these beautiful pieces from others. My brain has just been so empty lately; maybe I'm stocking up, and one day all the pent up deliberations will unstack themselves and pour out into blogpost after blogpost. Please be patient with my uncreative absence.
Yet another feature from one of my favorite poets: my dear friend Brianna Tongen.
Two Mornings
Morning #1 I wake and it is before dawn or deep winter. The coffee-timer blinks at 6:12am. Card table, calendar, woolly gray sweater. If I am alone in this apartment, then I am alone on this earth. I want to ask you if we dreamed of each other last night. Lightly gliding the night bridge of continents. Leaving the stairwell, it is still Minnesota. Christ, no one wants this to work more than me.
This day in German is called geschichte. in Hebrew, tanakh. or at least the part with the Tower of Babel. The land splits apart as their voices.
Morning #2 I wake and it is still winter. I was dreaming of a toddler. Her older siblings stuck a porcupine's quill into her ear, daring her to keep it there for one minute. They forgot about it, even though she cried. In my dream, she died on the bench of a diner. Forty minutes later. Do you ever shake your head to knock things out? like a loose bolt in the body of a music box? I have poured the Promised Land into my coffee This morning, I say a prayer of no toddlers dying ever. Every day, the winter gets married. And she slopes her bridal gown over my retaining wall. It is happening as I am writing it down.
The freezing telephone poles will be the first to tell you how it feels to die and stand upright forever.
Do you ever shake your head to knock things out and realize you have only knocked them deeper?