Risk_To_Blossom

She stood right in it with her hands out as if she thought she might catch the actual fall of light. I didn’t blink. Some air of my clumsy lashes even, could loiter across the room and chill her, ground her back into her own skin, when here, after such a long time of having shades pulled down,... Sign in to see full entry.

I had wrapped him in a towel to warm him and taken my lipstick, the best color, and the most expensive, from the drawer. I wrote him in beautiful words: Matthew Dahlia Stephens Boy Long as my arm From elbow out, and he was. He lay so sleepy bundled in my lap, braced by one arm, as I sat beside the... Sign in to see full entry.

He had let the hollow, formed between my chest and wrap of arms, close him in again, almost like my womb, and the warm water rifted down against the back of my neck and over my shoulders to blanket and float him again. I pressed him closer than my skin and hunched my shoulders up and over to swallow... Sign in to see full entry.

I did not say "No," to my baby. I only screamed sounds he didn't know into the air because it hurt so much to let him out when he finally decided to come. I did not clinch or fight because he was fighting so hard to make it and by then I wanted him in my arms with eyes open almost as much as I... Sign in to see full entry.

After a few moments I lock the door behind me, not because I'm expecting anyone to come all the way to the back corner of the Laundromat to try coaxing me out of a clean, dirty smelling bathroom. It just feels better this way. More sure. On the white washed wall above the puddled sink basin, a... Sign in to see full entry.

The Laundromat is busier than usual and that makes things worse. I don't think before I act. He's right about that. We pulled up fast and I peeled myself out of the car. I wasn't mad, but I slammed the door to nurse a single, moment of silence, when he could strike only my metal doorframe, and with... Sign in to see full entry.

My body shook for her hold and I found it with a grace I cannot explain. Beneath her blankets, her body was naked and pale but held onto a pocket of warmth big enough for me to fit into and I lay there forever, my back pressed up against her and my body smallish and caving in deeper and deeper with... Sign in to see full entry.

I watched by the light pushing in from the loft behind me, the gray, outlined shape of my own body pressed in shadow to her floor. A stringy, lonely figure stretching, longing, even pouring itself over, like a spill that continues to seep downhill, into her room. My shadow was reaching for her while... Sign in to see full entry.

She had said goodbye to me too many times and in too many ways to count for four years, none of them out loud, but all of them heard. They were nothing I could hold onto, tell anyone about, take a picture of… rather, her messages haunted me like some ephemeral presence among us made known only by... Sign in to see full entry.

Her death was our cocoon. Almost all of ours. Ella had long since flown away from us, and Daddy, well he was gone too. But for me, for Nadia, maybe even Aidan and baby Eve, it was a deep, dark place sagging with the weight of each our own wriggling and writhing, our desperation to make of ourselves... Sign in to see full entry.