Wrapped in a tiny winter coat and extra layers of deception, transferred from one mother to another, the baby girl arrived and grew up on black-soiled flatlands blanketed in corn and soybeans; played beneath buckeyes and oaks and maples and stormclouds and tornado sirens; inhaled lilacs and magnolias and honeysuckle and books and art; walked on eggshells and broken glass and coal slag hills that rose suddenly from the plain like impotent volcanoes; soaked in rote prayer and shame and incense and superstition; drew horses, wrote stories, painted landscapes, recited lines, planned escape, and eventually fled, never looking back (knowing the story of Lot's wife, refusing to tempt fate).
Wrapped in baby fat and extra layers of need, transferred from the wasting hometown to rolling hills and vibrant promise, the girl grew more, surrounding herself with Chemists and Accountants and English scholars and Psychologists and Semanticists and Writers and Poets and Drinkers and Witches and Eccentrics and Singers and Gamers and Dreamers; emerging eventually from that chrysalis wearing colorful new wings, unsure how best to use them, she stretched and beat them, slowly--awkwardly--rising and falling in eddys, nudged offcourse by occasional strong winds, moving forward (sometimes imperceptibly) nonetheless.
Wrapped in an ill-fitting grown-up costume, transferred from place to place, partner to partner, job to job, home to home, the woman sits, reflects, writes, glimpsing at the hazy edge of her peripheral vision a glowing half-life of empty pages laid out side by side, one by one, bright and blank, fading into the warm soft mist of a gauzy horizon.
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Cary Tennis
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Christine Geery
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Comments
And I think your tag should say "with enough punctuation a sentence can be completely unreadable you know." ;-)
Now I read this and absorb it with the memory of your vocal voice in my head, and it seems so much more powerful than just riveting font displayed on a screen.
One of the magic realists from south America wrote a whole novel with one sentence.
I felt there was an entire book/autobio in there.
very nice, Denise, I will be back for more.
R
I love you.
(rated)
I personally would hate to be Surrounded by Semanticists, although as Dave Barry used to say, it would make a great band name.