Risk_To_Blossom

HOLES “People are hurt all over.” That’s what I’m always telling her. “They’ve got these big old empty slots to fill, and they’re just sucking in whatever they can find to do it with. Makes them do awful things to each other,” I say. “Just awful,” and that’s the truth of it as far as I can see.... Sign in to see full entry.

Rem Stern is still mostly blonde and happens to be my next-door neighbor, which I can’t stand, and personally, can’t figure out. I know he moved out of #6 and into #2 right about when Mama and me got here, and I guess that was eight years ago if it was yesterday. If you walk up through the complex... Sign in to see full entry.

She says he’ll be coming by to stay for a bit. See how she’s getting along. He really is, (which is good, she tells me since the way she figures it, me and him can settle in nice and she’ll never have to worry again about being alone, since next to him, I’m all she’s got.) “And how do you know he’s... Sign in to see full entry.

I turn to face the front, where the road cowers beneath and between steep mountain-sides, like a river running, but rising on its own in a lazy stretch. It will be another month before the snows stop but the signs all say it, the ice will remain. That’s why it’s called black- “It’s cold,” I whisper,... Sign in to see full entry.

My mother is beautiful. Even without her chair, and her posters. Even without light falling through windows behind her. Without adjectives sprinkling the room into colors and shapes. Without any disguise at all. She is so beautiful that if I took you in, you would never even see her there. She has... Sign in to see full entry.

“Next time, pay attention is all I’m saying. Lay it out in pictures first. I mean, memorize her if you have to, and you can put it to words when you get back. That’ll be good practice, right?” “Memorize her?” I narrow my eyes down tighter and tighter until they are the perfect sized slits to contain... Sign in to see full entry.

Now, with her eyes the same as they have always been, she watches me, still seeing something else and I watch back, exactly like a blank slate. Then I turn from her, and move toward the hallway. The photograph hangs illumined by the strip of light seeping in and behind me, my mother’s breath... Sign in to see full entry.

“Landscapes,” you say. Fingers like sausages, and I have always thought so, wrap around the wheel and ride the arc left and right, left and then right when they don’t need to. “You know, surroundings. Setting,” you say. “Hannah, you never pay attention. You never listen.” You have recovered from the... Sign in to see full entry.

Fear. Worry. Sadness. Joy. Memory. Peace. And to her, now, they are the same. Everything is the same. The reflections in my mother’s eyes come and go before I catch them, one no longer above or even apart from another. She alone sees the vision of me before her, and simply stares. Her puddle-face is... Sign in to see full entry.

I did not learn from my mother this gift. I did not pay attention when I should have, for sadness has not gone. Only for a season: a prom night, a birthday party, an Easter egg hunt. Select times that my face was turned east or west, when she was leading me north or south. Select times, sadness let... Sign in to see full entry.