I think of the roundness of the word off my lips when whispered to Fable, the full-bodied us-ness that sweetens its core. I think of the history fluttering like photographs off the sound when I say it to my mother, the growing pains and old stories and raw holy knowns. I think of the lightness it carries offered like a balloon to a new friend on a dark day, the weight of it surrounded by weeping, the violent stubborn might of it when I am at the end of what I want to endure. I have used the word love as a weapon and balm, as a promise, a solution, a proposition, and a simple fact of my being.
I have owned love. Love has owned me.
About three years ago, a year into motherhood and five or six into life here in Portland, I started…
There are two, currently, on the top bunk, reading aloud to each other in sister-hush whispers, and two, mother and son, curled somewhere dreaming below me on the bottom floor. There is a half-sick husband shuffling, and old dog attempting a nap, and somewhere, a mostly-owned puppy is chewing something she probably shouldn't.
There was a sunrise, once when I was young-flailing and sure of nothing, that began with fogged windows in a borrowed car. The sun rose, and we gathered ourselves and the scattered pieces of hope and failure, removed our bodies from their newest and only proximity, stole one last glance from angles we would never revisit, and drove with our faces to the rising and our backs to the ocean and the last time I knew what I wanted. And all the way home, you were holding my hand.
Dear Beautiful Girl -
Metaphor is the blessing and the curse of the writer. It's the tool that gives us the ability to voice the un-voiceable truths, open the doors inside of other humans and air out all the unspeakable things, and also the crutch that makes us insufferable in an argument and pretty much the worst when all you need is a straight answer......
Here is how to fall in love when your heart has been broken:
Begin with leaves. Crush just a little on the magic of a wildfire fall, the red and yellow swirling, the fluttering rush. Take long walks under sun-shadowed canopies and let the sound of them soothe you - trust them, even though you know they are only temporary. Let yourself rest in the beauty of leaves, and once you have loved them, just a little, just enough, love more.
Dear Beautiful Girl – I rarely carry you these days. You run, and climb, and walk, and jump –…
Let’s promise each other we won’t be wasted. Maybe it begins with making our beds in the morning, opening…
When I am an old woman, I will stand bare-skinned in swimming pool locker rooms, wrinkle-folded, freckled, raw and…
Hi there. I’m Karyn, and I’m a Stitch Fix avoider. Don’t get me wrong – I think it’s a…
