Tag: love
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Prayer
for Rachel Woodard Grey as the in-between of everythingnever meant to be understood—your eyes had a wayof taking the weight of the dayfrom my shoulders; when they could not, I found in themsuch forgiveness for my defeat. Heartfully, I always listenedwhen your wisdom asked for my attention— our words, sparse enough,were generally tradedwith playful…
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The Language We Bury Them In
for Hannah Hamilton You wrote of comfort, crawfish boils and Port Vincent – for your father and the South and all of the things I’ve ever loved or never knew about. I read more and I learned you: your voice, flat on a paper, but heaving from aches, jerking from anticipation, and then rising with…
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I’d Be Lying
if I said I wasn’t nervous. My sister, concerned: I’m afraid Christians may hurt my son. I’ve been up all night trying to decide if we should go. When I say Christian, I don’t mean Christian; I mean those who say amen when it isn’t right. Is it more important to be seen, to show…
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Exit Strategy
Three months is my average; rarely do I last any longer playing the role of lover. I’ve dared myself to resist the urge to leave, but it goes against my truths. When lust-minded hands turn to watchful eyes, I try to decide if it’s worth it to be wanted for more than late hours. Lovers begin…
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Butter Pecan
For as long as I can remember, the chair across from the television was where I would sink into for safety. She was there, my grandmother, sitting on the couch: half Indian-style, her left foot curled under her right knee and her other leg stretched out, hanging off the edge of the cushions. On commercials,…
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Dear Parents:
Strike the soft skin of your children; leave marks. Go on: show them how hard they must become to be like you. Mold them to be mindless: coach them to react with fists; make them believe that words have little worth. Shape them into an almighty monster: modern man. Destroy their purity and imagination by…
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Eleven Years
He gets confused sometimes— gets up, walks a few steps, –pauses– looks blankly ahead then turns around, sits back down slowly. The doctor says it’s dementia; it’s just the beginning, really. It’s in his eyes, though: everything. He’s not forgotten anything; I’ve not, either— not the way he sat with me quietly through the years:…
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Olene’s Elegy
Oh January, you cannot bury the beauty of the worth born into your care, more than many years ago. End all you like, but your last day will be celebrated evermore and everafter the end of September attempts to steal your glory. You see, hearts know nothing of calendars or finality. February will follow you…
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Split
I draw fault lines in your quake, shaking at the symmetry in which we are divided; you are not the world I once woke to, and I am no more the earth you dug into with callused hands that craved our growth. There is only air between us, dense as it is, obscuring our views,…
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Airing
I can hear the television blaring and I just want silence or chaos or maybe just a cup of coffee; the kind you’d tell me to go make a fresh pot of when I would drop by, without knocking, and without an invitation to sit in that chair, the one with the not-hardly but probably-once-was…
Rachel Nix 