*deeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeep inhale* hi!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
well, here we are: may, taurus season, cinco de mayo, the rainy precipice of hot girl summer et al. last week i escaped to the rocky mountains for a much needed respite with some of my favorite writers/people and now i’ve landed back at sea level rejuvenated and ready to usher in a new Writing Era™.
before my colorado adventure, you might know that i was taking part in a gorgeous little challenge called escapril where i wrote a bit of prose (almost) every day of the month. i’ll be so real and say i only completed 25/30 (as if i would assign myself homework while i’m trying to kiki with my friends…… who do you think i am!!!) but i’m very proud of where i landed.
i’m not the type of writer who normally writes every single day, all the time. the more writers i meet, the more i wonder if anyone really does-- besides the akwaeke emezis and stephen kings of the world. (good for them. i admire them and i am not them.) if i can get words on the page a few days out of a given week, i’m thrilled. my capricorn placements (moon AND rising….. pray 4 me) would love for me to be CEO of Output but alas i am one (1) woman who usually feels like three (3) little girls in a trenchcoat, and i can only do so much while Working A Full Time Job (ew) and Being A Human With Limits (double ew).
the thing that surprised me most about escapril wasn’t the output, though. it was how true it was to its name: it was a saucy little escape in the middle of my day, usually written in stolen moments at lunch or between meetings, fast and fleeting, on the google docs app in my phone. my actual love life is dry as hEeeeEEElll (jean-ralphio style) so having a clandestine thrill in the form of daily flash prose was… life-giving, to say the least. i felt free to wiggle and experiment and be a little naughty. (ooo!)
with that… i wanna share a few more of my favorites with you. i promise i’ll be back sooner than soon with my usual youngest daughter musings, but MY tortured poets department MY rules!!!!
enjoy:
day 23: “simulation”
he asks me if i believe in simulation theory and i sip my sangria with a firm gasp and a fuck no. i live by many gospels and this is one: if elon musk is touting it it’s probably horseshit. this is another: anyone who claims to have our weird, surprising, magical lives all figured out is probably small-minded. and another, one of the few trinkets i’ve taken from my adolescent stint in catholicism: isn’t the delight in the mysteries of faith? maybe i don’t want to know why life is so beautiful and so tragic — maybe it just is. fair enough, he says, a distant smile backlit by the window, and i wonder where i lost him. i ask him who his confirmation saint was and he scoffs, says i figured out that was all bullshit in like, fourth grade. he loses me there.
day 7: “portrait”
portrait of us the last time we saw each other: a painter could get the hair right, maybe, coiffed to perfection in your brother’s bathroom upstairs. our eyes spackled with the same gold shimmer. but i don’t think human hands could capture the pure joy. the blur of too many gin and tonics. our dresses, silky and thrashing, elbowing everyone else out of the way on the dance floor. a skilled brush could fill in the hydrangeas, and the candle wax, and the disco balls. the ivory tent looming above the tennis court, like the spire of a castle. but how to mix the right color that says for a moment we were girls again, and your life hadn’t changed before our eyes? later that night we jumped in the pool in full glam and i held my fake lashes above my head like a trophy. the rest of us marinated in the hot tub until the wee hours, and we all texted you in rounds while you slept in your new husband’s arms to say we missed you already. anna and i slept side by side in your childhood bed and when we woke up, shuttling to the airport in twos, we wanted to do it all again. what kind of canvas could hold that bittersweet magic?
day 15 - “beach”
sorry have to hop on another call, i type. thanks all!
there is no other call. i am shoveling everything into the biggest bag i own: towel, sunglasses, book, check, check, check. i drive an hour out of the city, buoyed by my surf rock playlist and the sweet silence of my notifications. i am watering my water sign, as some beautiful person on tiktok told me to do. i pop into a kitschy souvenir shop and scoop a handful of tiny hermit crabs, painted in every color of the rainbow, into the pocket of my canvas tote. i walk out without paying and set out to return them from whence they came. it’s a day where the water has cleaned herself up into an acceptable shade of turquoise, not that silty galveston mud i knew from childhood. i wade in waist deep. i set my new friends free. i do not flinch at the seaweed curling around my ankles. i bake in the relentless sun until i am nothing but sweaty, golden skin and freckly elbows. the beach unsticks something in me. at the beach i am a teenager reading frida kahlo’s bisexual love letters at the art museum in corpus christi while waves crash against the windows, sun-fried, swimsuit straps peeking out from under my dress. at the beach i have never said the sentence let’s circle back on that.
i walk along the pier, bright lights and carnival games, and stop where no one can see me. i open my bag and fling my laptop over the edge. i watch it sputter and froth.
one last stop: i take myself to the expensive beachside restaurant, the one with five dollar signs next to the name on google. i order a tequila sunrise. it comes to me in a beautiful glass. i have kept one hermit crab. i sneak her out of my bag. she has a lavender shell. she sits primly on the white tablecloth. cheers, i whisper. to our new life.
Prose always feels like the most accurate to the authors thoughts; just a beautifully written stream of consciousness!
cheers to our new life!!