today i heard myself say: "i aim to be helpful above all things," then i wondered "is that true?" the conclusion is no. i don't know what i aim for above all things, or if the things i aim to be even fall within a hierarchy. what i do know is that it is a wonderful thing to be helpful, but there is likely an even more wonderful joy i could experience. ok.

a woman is a womb

hands hands hands

It was not the hand that caused harm that I was scared of, but the fact that it was also the hand that held mine in the supermarket well into my teenage years. They were the hands that made fairy houses in the backyard, same hands that demonstrated with my shoelaces in rabbit ears, weaving one under the other to form a sturdy knot.

Re: Mother

In my favorite photograph, a teenaged version of her stands in front of a small clapboard house. She’s wearing a white scarf around her neck Grey Gardens style, a white lace Sunday dress and Mary Jane’s. She’s thrown her elbow up to shield her face. A violent wind picks up suddenly and scatters red sand across the frame. 

Really enjoying the company of myself today. Things I have seen: several extroverted deer, a taxidermy badger you could touch gently, 2 boa constrictors mating, teen geese, and a white dreaded stranger's opened arm embrace.

empathy switch is faulty

Bodies

Over the last 24 years I have spent so much time hating my body. Lately, I've found it hard to hate my body like I used to. I might even say I love my body now.

make believe fight

I take some kind of perverse pleasure in watching couples fight in public. Emily and I have never had a real fight, nor anything that could ever resemble conflict. Because we are new and in love we are hurdling toward "firsts" as fast as we can, even our first fight. At stoplights we make angry yelling faces and mouth hateful words with the windows up. I slap the dashboard to sharpen some imaginary point. Other drivers inch slowly forward so as to distance themselves from our pretend rage. This is a kind of make believe that can only last so long. We know that.

hairbrush

I got a promotion which means I should be able to afford a hairbrush, and I can. I just haven't gotten around to buying one.

so small

I work behind a circular desk in an office doing what amounts to simple administrative work but has a much more hireable job title. Bless us for the small triumphs. I am the youngest of my "colleagues," though I can't help but feel they are all my direct supervisors. They have meetings at long boardroom tables right next to my desk. Sometimes I am invited, in which case I sit silent, nod and coo when appropriate, my face pained from the plastered on "engaged" face I have come to wear so often nowadays. Often I am not invited, and I sit behind my screen reading articles or taping barcodes on new books. Today I am not invited, the clacking of my keyboard is the only reminder I am here at all. "My goodness Alyse, I didn't even see you over there," a colleague says. "That's okay, I am so small," I reply.