I write because I want to understand. I write because I don’t understand. I write anyway. I write to think. I write to feel. I write because my body is mostly water.
I write to translate water. I write like I’m swimming. I write deeper and deeper to find my breath. I write to remember I never lost it. I write the silence of being underwater. I write rhythm. I write tides. I write endless grains of sand. I write to honor the twisting cypress trees and my grandmothers. I write because the moon doesn’t give up on me. I write because I don’t give up on me.
I write because I was a child with an imaginary friend. I write to remember her. I write to remember me. I write stories moving through my body. I write to hold them tighter. I write to let them go.
I write because you didn’t see me. I write because you did. I write to hold your hand in the dark. I write a thousand tiny hearts in the margin of my notebook.
I write to play. I write to dance. I write because a song made me cry.
I write because I’m afraid I’ll forget everything. I write because I’m afraid I’ll be forgotten. I write to leave my children pieces of me to hold onto when I’m gone.
I write because the world is filled with contradictions. I write because I’m filled with contradictions.
I write to understand how gravity and time change depending on who I stand beside. I write as one who has been hurt and who has hurt others. I write to understand forgiveness.
I write because my fingers and jaw need to unclench. I write because the wind told me to.
I write because of beautiful journals and smooth pens. I write because words cost nothing and I’m broke. I write lies. I write truths. I write as if you have been by my side the entire time.
I write because I hope you will like me. I write because it doesn’t matter if you do.
I write even though the words must be extracted with bloody fingertips and it hurts and I get angry. I write certain you will figure out I’m a fraud, but hoping you won’t care. I write because sometimes I touch something like spirit, like source, and it’s intoxicating. I write because we are all this vulnerable.
I write as one who learns and forgets over and over. I write as if I’m going to never stop. I write because someday I will.
I write because words, like me, are imperfect, and yet I still love them.
My good friend Neil challenged his readers to write a list of why they write. I turned 47 today and I decided to celebrate it by answering. I’d be honored if you took up his call and wrote your own list. Let me know if you do and thank you for reading.
find me where winter waters flow honey thick. where ferns weave baskets cradling colored stones. listen for songs dripping down cave walls, tiny fairy feet dancing delicately on crushed shells, soft foamy voices calling your name. follow them. do not despair as earthen gravity releases you. let go. reach through murky darkness until our fingertips merge. hold tight as our toes taste stars. I’m beside you watching our bubbly breath connect inside and outside. beautifully untethered.
in Winter in all Winters it lays dormant inside domed darkness
you walk past it looking nowhere anywhere, but not there never there
yet it goes still growing bedrock feral mushroom bellied lichen ferocious trapping pain web-like crackling like ice smelling like bruised desperation like untouched skin like hot ash scattered by eroded winds
you don’t need to see to feel
you walk faster looking nowhere anywhere, but not there never there
yet it goes still like tides like movement Spring saplings tap-dancing on rooted tiptoes daffodils issuing battle cries thrusting spears upward dandelion puffs cooing dreaming light again there’s a light somewhere he says
your nested winds sigh your meadow grasses rustle your waters ripple gently
When children are small you can sprinkle nutritional yeast on millet and tell them it’s fairy dust. With a word, it becomes so. Such is the power of language. What if we could do the same with our dreams? Here’s a poem and flash fiction rambling on about such things. Let me know what you think.
little shadow
perched on a purple wall staring at my sleeping child
what do you see shadow bird?
do you see. see like me?
my grandfather became cloud grandmother became butterfly.
I sit in her chair. I sing with his voice.
what will be left for her when I,transform?
maybe I become you. maybe I watch from a wall.
flying with one word. staying with another. word.
dream me alive. over and over and over. clove and nutmeg. owl spreading wings.
forest hears, nothing.
another dream
Transform
One night during a dream of chaos and war a woman gives birth to a baby with hair the color of fresh snow. The baby blinks at the woman with eyes as green as ancient ferns and coos like a dove. What if instead of forgetting the baby when she woke the woman decides to name her Mabel and she becomes as real as coffee.
The woman dresses the dream baby in clothes the color of fresh marigolds and wears her close to her chest in a carrier woven of the softest wool. She takes the baby out into the rain and her laugh becomes lightning. The world sparks around them and glows brighter.
The plants in the woman’s house grow with the baby—greener and taller, greener and taller until the woman is forced to cut through them with a large knife, like an explorer in a jungle. She and the baby laugh at the silliness of it as birds make nests in her living room and a family of rabbits discovers the perfect place to live within her closet.
They spend most days outdoors so Mabel can make the grass thicker, the trees taller, and the flowers bolder. The neighbors don’t know what’s making their gardens grow and the woman decides not to tell them. Not everyone believes as strongly as she does and she fears their disbelief will pull the child away.
When Mabel starts walking the woman takes her outside in the middle of the night and upon seeing the full moon the child begins to sing. The tiny lilting notes cause the stars to dance and the moon to move closer and closer to the Earth. The woman knows this won’t go unnoticed and will have terrible consequences, but she hesitates to act because love defies logic and gravity. Love defies most things.
Mabel however makes the choice for her, wiggling out of her grasp and floating toward the moon. The baby with hair as white as snow returns back into the dream where she was born and the woman walks home alone. Her house feels different but she smiles the same because Mabel is as real as coffee and her physical absence changes nothing. She wraps herself in wool and dream walks to visit her child.
open and shut them a game with toddlers to still their hands to make them giggle I play it in my head to still my fears open and shut them ambulance out the window stretcher in the hall two paramedics in blue electrodes on his chest it’s not like last time give a little clap, clap, clap take me back to stillness no ripples spreading out just flat glassy ease a breath and a sigh open and shut them pajama pants, slip-on shoes home before sunrise coffee while he sleeps hugs when he wakes put them in your lap, lap, lap
Dad stands beneath a massive oak tree running his fingers along the ridges of the bark and staring at the branches above. I step lightly through the dried leaves and acorns until I’m close enough to touch the tree. I copy his movements exactly but I don’t understand what we are doing here. This isn’t safe.
Although winter rains don’t start for another few months, a mild storm last week has added color and flow to the landscape. A cluster of bright yellow mushrooms peaks out from beneath brown and orange-colored leaves. The grasses are dotted with shoots of green. I don’t always see what Dad sees but I try.
He sighs, a low almost moaning sound, as if in pain. Maybe he is. With a final pat of the tree, he bends and gathers two small sticks from the ground. He hands one to me and I pull out my pocket knife to sharpen the tip.
“Put that away,” he says. “I want to show you something.”
His blue eyes squint at the setting sun as he smiles at me. We don’t get moments like these often and I stay quiet for fear I’ll ruin it. He reaches out his hand and grabs mine and I imagine we are an ordinary father and daughter out on a walk. A bird sings in a nearby tree as if it too wants to help pretend normalcy.
We wind along a small narrow trail until we come to a little bridge made of stacked rocks arched gently over a slow-moving creek. Dad adjusts his pack, rests his belly on the cold stones, and leans over the side.
“Come here,” he says. “Look with me.”
I copy his movements exactly and lean as far forward as I can. The brownish water isn’t far below and it flows over several dark jagged stones. A large red leaf falls into the water and disappears under the bridge. Dad whispers low as if talking to the creek and not me.
“I came here as a kid. I didn’t recognize the place until l saw the old oak tree. My aunt used to bring me here…she taught me a lot in these woods.”
Dad never talks about his past and I had no idea we had traveled to where he grew up. It’s hard to picture him as a child not knowing all the ways of the woods. Do rocks and trees remember people? I press my ear into the stones and try and listen.
“You got your stick?”
Dad holds his stick parallel to the water. It’s slightly larger and curvier than the one he handed me. I copy his movements exactly. His voice remains low but it feels as if we are sharing a secret now instead of him talking to the water. I like this version of Dad.
“When I count to three drop your stick. Okay? Ready? One…two…three!”
We drop our sticks and they splash before disappearing under the bridge. Dad rushes to the other side and I follow. We watch until we see my smaller stick appear followed closely by his curved one.
“You won!”
He pats me on the shoulder with his broad hand and I smile. We rarely play games together and I don’t want this to end. It’s nice to forget.
“Can we play again?”
He winks and squeezes my hand in his.
“You don’t think I’m gonna just let you win?”
We gather sticks and play four more rounds until the tally sits at 2-3 in favor of me. I’m about to suggest another round when he points at the water and laughs.
“Would you look at that? I haven’t seen those in years.”
I follow his gaze and almost scream. Directly below us is a pair of strange bugs walking on the water. I find it hard to swallow as I take a shaky step backward.
“Wh…what are they?”
“Oh, they have lots of names. Water skeeters. Water gliders. Pond skaters. Puddle flies. Oh, I used to love watching them as a kid. Do you see how they have three pairs of legs?”
I do. Without him explaining to me, I know what all three of those pairs do. The middle legs do the steering. The back legs give the power. Those front legs…those are for grabbing prey.
“My aunt and I would stand here and watch them for hours. She called it the Wonderful Water Bug Show.” He alters his voice until it sounds like an announcer, the kind we heard in the early days of the invasion. “Come one and come all to the Wonderful Water Bug Show! It’s not every day you can see bugs defying gravity. Behold the magic of the Wonderful Water Striders!”
He says the last word and the realization hits him. I see the happy memory fade from his face in a flash. He moves to touch my arm in apology or maybe comfort but stops when we see the shadow coming. He grabs his bow, loads an arrow, turns sideways, and aims at the end of the bridge. One breath. Two. I copy his movements exactly. A warrior shadow beside him.
It makes no sound as it approaches but it’s fast. We aim for the long cylindrical mouth, the part we’ve seen pierce the skin of hundreds of people and suck them dry. Both our shots hit its head but it still moves toward us. Its legs always keep moving after it’s dead. We scoot to the side as it rolls past.
“Striders,” Dad says under his breath and pulls me in for a quick side hug. “Time to move.”
Most of my childhood has been running from these monsters. Dad says they were once people who were changed by a terrible accident but it’s hard to think of them as people with those long extra legs and those horrible mouths. The eyes though…those do always look human. This one had green ones like me.
Dad says we are winning the war but I never believed him until today. The Striders are like the bugs who walk on water under the bridge and bugs can be killed easily. Squashed. We can win a war against a bug.
Leaving the bridge we retrieve our arrows from the unmoving creature. A bright green pus oozes from the holes and a familiar smell makes me gag. I give the body a final kick with the metal toe of my boot before we walk away.
“Stupid bug,” I say.
A low pink cloud sits on the horizon and Dad smiles. He straightens his pack, checks the laces of his shoes, and takes three breaths. I copy his movements exactly and follow him into the woods at a run.
panic sits inside my shoulder just under the skin wiggling spiderset leggy, crawling 3 a.m. do you know where your children are? i check, don’t trust my eyes other senses won’t wake drive a tractor toward a fence can’t go fast enough to break through are they on the other side am i running to or from something hold my hand, am i really here bubbles become breath, no breath is bubbly spiders lie, right, it’s not real 4 a.m. do you know where your children are? they aren’t little but the world is bigger now eyes too open, close them rest your head upon my shoulder my head doesn’t know where to rest it spins, a top loose upon the table, it trips the horse we tumble, tangled limbs, hoofs, hair spider calls its friends, a party moves down my body pop the champagne, let’s go 5 a.m. do you know where your children are? pull the legs off so they can’t scurry inside i still feel them even when i say they aren’t real exterminators tell me they got every single one but why do i hear them tap dancing clever cat knows, he will find them for me hearts can only take so much, he purrs 6 a.m. do you know where your children are? too late to take the little white pill, stuff to do it makes me sleepy—fight it, fight it, fight it eight-leg shadows find my chest, neck, eyes fine, take it, one loud swallow fingers find keyboard, words trip/flip/skip not good enough, not anything, fine, all fine check kids one more time, one more time one more time step outside, cool air brushes skin softer morning traffic sounds, my ocean in and out, nothing else, we breathe seagulls cry with the mourning doves time to do last night’s dishes another load of laundry i know where my kids are
Author’s note: I suffer from occasional panic attacks. I had one this morning and penned these words in an attempt to capture the feeling.
Bridgette Tales 