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August 2001

It’s important to recognize my imperfections; it’s also important to stop pretending I’m less than I am. This morning, I woke up suffused with a love no words can describe. But in a few minutes, I was reaching for my dog-eared script, already forgetting the radiance that had permeated my being.

Getting Dirty

A “gandy dancer,” a shoe-repair store, an annual slide show

Rebellion

Sister Mary Joseph, an ax and a prized peach tree, a fabric highway

Going To Bed

A late night walk on the beach, Drambuie or bourbon, the dreaded Carrot Lady

Decomposing

It’s all in the way she comes out of her shop and says, “Come in here, my dear,” as soon as she sees you on the sidewalk in your nightgown, your dog beside you. It’s the way she says, “There, there,” though she has no idea what’s wrong. The way she clutches at her own breast when you try to tell her.

On Catching My Husband With A Cigarette After Seven Years Of Abstinence

Help Me With This

It’s been almost two years since I shot and killed a ten-year-old boy. It was an overcast day in early December, and I was hunting from the deer stand I’d built where my property meets the woods.

December 2000

We fell asleep the usual way, Norma curled against me, the cats between us at the foot of the bed. At three in the morning, she woke up, violently sick from something she’d eaten, and spent the next two hours throwing up. I knelt beside her in the bathroom, my arm around her shoulder. There are many positions for love.

November 2000

In the moonlight, I study the face of the woman I’ve loved for eighteen years. I’m thankful the moonlight traveled such a vast distance tonight, just so I could see her sleeping.

Any Comments Or Questions?

Girlie slid out like a hot buttered noodle on that Indian-summer night in October — her father’s birthday, in fact.