Lacey Louwagie's Blog, page 26

A Year in the Life: Week 3 – Letter to a Columnist

This week, the writing exercise from A Year in the Life was to write a letter to a columnist giving “advice” about something you’ve been through.

Since so many people seem preoccupied with finding “the one,” I wrote about how my romantic life blossomed after I’d decided to give up dating “for good.”

I’m writing to all those who are waiting for Mr. or Ms. Right to come along.

I am thirty-two years old and have been married for one year to a wonderful, kind, stable, smart, affectionate man–he’s more than I ever dreamed.

In truth, my dreams about getting married faded somewhere around age 25. I was still a virgin, and in fact had never even been kissed. Sometimes I felt very anxious as I wondered whether I would ever “find someone.” But most of the time, I was too busy to be anxious. What was I doing during those years? I was keeping journals, writing novels, reading books, playing guitar, watching movies with my best friend, reading Tarot and working for an organization I was passionate about. I had strong friendships, and my life was full and satisfying. I was prescient enough to understand that this time of my life was sacred, this time with so much freedom, so much opportunity to explore. Over those years, I grew more and more into myself, and I started throwing out some ideas–like the assumption that I would one day marry, that I was straight, or that being single meant something was missing.

When I was twenty-seven, I started to date for the first time in my life. Before then, I always assumed that meeting the right person would just “happen.” But although my life was still satisfying, I was living alone at the time and came to realize how hard it was for anything to “happen” while I was always in my apartment.

I also needed to consider an idea that I’d previously rejected–namely, the idea that by dating others, you learn more about yourself and what you want from a partner or a relationship. I was convinced I already had a clear idea of who I was and what I wanted–but when I began dating, I realized I didn’t know as much as I thought I did.

I used an online dating site with a matching algorithm, and I learned after several romances that didn’t survive “real life” very well that what I thought I wanted, and who I’d actually fallen for in my life, didn’t really match up. I met really wonderful people that reaffirmed my faith in dating in general, but none of them were quite right for me. My longest “relationship” during that time was three months, and I wondered whether I had “outgrown” falling in love (I was 28!) and thought that dating just “wasn’t for me.”

I decided to move back to my hometown due to financial issues and an opportunity to live in the country again. Before I moved, and as part of that decision, I spent a lot of time coming to peace with “letting go” of dating forever. I was moving to a small town where I was related to nearly everyone, and where I hadn’t really fit in while I was growing up. If I hadn’t been able to find someone in a progressive, artsy city of 85,000, where I felt I “fit in” better than anywhere I’d ever lived before, how would I meet someone in a town with a population of 1,300? So, I meditated, reflected, prayed, journaled, and came to peace with my new future–a future where I would be at the center of my life and sink into it fully–get a dog for companionship and protection, plant a garden for sustenance.

A month after I moved, I got an email from the man who would become my husband.

Thinking I’d gotten the “relationship thing” out of my system, I didn’t invest much in my correspondence with him. Plus, he had a lower “match” percentage (72%) than anyone else I’d dated from the site–and if those almost perfect matches didn’t pan out, how could this? There are three reasons that I decided to meet him anyway.

He was persistent.
He asked if I’d like to talk on the phone, and I hate talking on the phone … so I proposed an in-person meeting to get out of it.
I figured that after meeting him, I could officially write him off and return to building the life of peaceful solitude I had envisioned.

Still, first dates stressed me out so much that, the night before ours, I vowed I wouldn’t ever do it again. And I wrote in my journal exactly what kind of person he would need to be to make getting over my relationship inertia worth it–

and he fit that description to a T.

My plan to “write him off” went horribly awry, and instead I found myself falling intensely, quickly, unexpectedly in love.

I had an inkling I would marry him after our first date, but I quickly wrote that off. But by the time we’d been dating for four months, I was certain. We were engaged on the one-year anniversary of our first date and married 16 months later.

Ivan isn’t perfect, and neither am I, and neither is our relationship. But most days, I’m still so deliriously happy that we found each other–letting go of the expectation of finding a partner makes having him in my life all the more sweet, as if I somehow got away with cheating fate. I don’t think I would have been able to be this happy if I was “looking” for him or “waiting” for him–because my mind would have been too tied up with fitting him into some idea of who I wanted as a lover and a partner to let my heart just laugh and enjoy the ride. That is the true beauty of letting go–that it finally lets your heart have its way.

Although Ivan is one of the best things that’s ever happened to me, I’m glad I didn’t meet him earlier in my life. It’s because of all those years of solitude and exploration and learning that I’m able to love him now, fully, gratefully, and without resentment. My relationship with him has changed me–mostly made me softer around the edges–but I haven’t lost myself. In some ways, I’m more myself, because in addition to everything I learned about myself when I was single, now I’m learning about who I am in an intimate relationship, too. He’s allowed my exploration and unfolding to deepen and continue–not cut it off short like I always feared a relationship would.

And I’ve learned that so many of the cliches about love are true–

that it finds you when you stop looking for it
that everything really is “different” with the right person
that sometimes the one who’s right for you is nothing like what you expected
that you have to love yourself before you love others

But cliches hardly comfort when you’re lonely, frustrated, and waiting. So the three non-cliche pieces of advice I can impart are these:

Let go, but don’t give up. Stay open.
Don’t wait–live, enjoy, and cherish your life just the way it is.
There are a thousand ways to be whole and happy–with or without a partner–and at least one of them is bound to find you.

My New Guitar — and the Importance of Writing it Down

Last night, my dad and my sister presented me with a new guitar they had made as a belated birthday present. My dad did the assembly and staining, and my sister did the woodburned artwork. The photos don’t do it justice, but she took kind of a “collage” approach, including images of many things that are important to my life — my pets, unicorns, books, and on the back, Rapunzel. Even my guitar is telling me there’s no excuse not to get back to writing that thing! (Well, except taking time to write about my guitar. That seems like a good excuse.)

Rapunzel

The prince

After my family went home, I pulled out my old journal where I’d written songs back in 2003 – 2006. Paging through it, I liked seeing some of the songs I’d forgotten about. The notebook is sort of a time capsule of some of my most defining experiences while I lived in Duluth, and I was so glad I had written them down. Just seeing the lyrics in my messy handwriting brought me back to that huge apartment with the shiny linoleum floors, and all that sunlight coming in through the windows.

Dad, Krystl, me, and the guitar

But I was somewhat dismayed to find that, except in the earliest songs (incidentally, the ones that I don’t think are as good), I didn’t write down the chord progressions — just the lyrics. I remember that back when I used to play regularly, I had all the songs I’d written memorized, as well as a handful of songs I hadn’t written. So I  “assumed” I’d just always know my own music. I wish I hadn’t made that assumption! If only I had foreseen that, in the future, I’d go three years without even touching my guitar — but that one day I’d want to play those songs again, and share them with my husband. Now, I have to do my best to relearn the chords based on my memory of how the songs were supposed to sound, and I’m cursing my laziness in the midst of the initial creative bursts!

All of this drives home to me the importance of writing things down if we really want to hold onto them. Heck, it’s thanks to the written word that we’re able to know as much as we do know about the past, and historians often find themselves wishing our ancestors had bothered to write more. Another mistake I made was in not dating the songs. Although I have a rough idea about when they were written based on content, I wish I had the exact dates there, since, especially without the chords written down, they’re almost just glorified journal entries. Someday when I’m famous, my biographers are going to be frustrated by this lack of foresight on my part as they comb through my various written ephemera. (I just finished reading Lyndall Gordan’s absolutely amazing biography of Emily Dickinson, Lives Like Loaded Guns, which includes the difficulty of dating some of Emily’s undated poetry and letters, which is why that detail stuck out — not because I’m so conceited that I think that’s actually going to be an issue, I swear.)

As a writer, the most important thing I can do is write. One of my pet peeves is people who think of themselves as writers because “they have their whole story all planned out in their heads.” That’s the easy part; you’re not a writer until you put pen to paper or fingers to keyboard. Before that, all you’ve got is thoughts — and we’ve all got plenty of those.

I can at least be grateful that I wrote down as much as I did, and made tapes of the songs (somewhere) that I should be able to dig up and listen to for reference. So, now I have one more endeavor to add to my endless list of creative goals. When can I retire, again?

Catholicism: the Basement in My House of Faith

I’ve got a new post up on Young Adult Catholics, even though it isn’t my week to write. I was afraid I wouldn’t be able to hold onto the thread all the way until next week. It’s an attempt to answer a question I get quite commonly about “why I stay” in a Church in which I won’t support many official teachings. The short answer is, “It’s complicated.” The longer answer is here.

“Bikini Bods” for Ten-Year-Olds?

I subscribe to the Help a Reporter Out (HARO) newsletter, which includes daily calls for interview subjects and experts in various areas. Earlier this week, Girls Life put out a call titled, “Top teen mag looking for pro/celeb trainers for a bikini body Faceook chat.” When I went to the Girls Life website, I found an image of a barely pubescent girl in a pink bikini playing with a beach ball; her position makes her bikini top ride up so you can just see the underside of her new breasts; her hipbones jut out above her bikini bottom, and her ribs are visible. (So, too, are the ribs of the pubescent boy she’s playing with.)

Girls Life magazine is aimed at girls ages 10-16, but with the plethora of girls’ magazines on the market that cater specifically to the “teen” crowd (ages 13 +), it’s probably safe to assume that many of Girls Life readers skew on the younger side of the demographic. And I don’t know about you, but I find the idea of an 11-year-old worrying about her “bikini bod” to be a little troubling.

Something very crucial happens to girls’ bodies between the years of 10 and 16. Namely, they go through puberty. They gain significant weight, because for the first time they have breasts and hips, and because their body begins to store fat differently. This weight gain is normal and healthy–you can’t continue to weigh what you did before you had breasts after they develop–but it can still be pretty freaky. I remember being devastated when, over the summer between 5th and 6th grade, I gained 20 pounds. I was afraid that I’d suddenly gotten “fat.” I hadn’t. I’d just “developed,” as we used to say.

This is why anything aimed at girls this young advocating attaining some type of “perfect” body really distresses me. Statistics already tell us that 81% of ten-year-old girls are afraid of being fat. With this figure, it might be easy to say that Girls Life is just responding to what girls “want,” but I’m not buying it. We know that looking at magazines makes girls and women feel worse about themselves, so I feel that media like this is part of the problem, causing these alarmingly high statistics when it comes to body dissatisfaction, rather than helping girls address it in a healthy way.

Luckily, there is an alternative. Since 2002, I’ve worked in various capacities with New Moon Girl Media, a magazine and web community for girls ages 8 – 14. Right now, New Moon Girls’ 25 Beautiful Girls issue is on the newstand. The 25 Beautiful Girls issue highlights girls for their kindness, intelligence, bravery, and heart–the things that make them beautiful on the inside. Although it began as a protest to People Magazine’s 50 Most Beautiful People, it serves as an appropriate protest to Girls Life’s “bikini bod” obsession, too. Not only does New Moon Girls offer positive content that steers girls’ attention away from body-criticism, but it also helps girls see through “the sell” they become confronted with more and more in our society, the lie that tells them they must look and be a certain way to be “happy.” And in honor of New Moon’s 20th Anniversary, you can get 20% off new subscriptions in the month of May by using the promo code anniv20. If you, too, cringe at the thought of eleven-year-olds being preoccupied with their bodies or wondering “how to get a boyfriend” (another feature currently on the Girls Life homepage), New Moon Girls is for you and the girls you love.

My Last Day of One Job, Embarking on Another

Yesterday was my last official day as Teen Services Librarian for the Marshall-Lyon County Library. My heart is sort of breaking over it–I loved that job so much, but it was a two-hour commute, one way, once a week. I’m still processing all of that, and might blog about it more extensively, but for now, I’m working on a new writing “job” to help take my mind off it. I’ve started doing the weekly exercises in Sheila Bender’s A Year in the Life: Journaling for Self Discovery. Before embarking on them, she encourages you to “hire” yourself as a journal keeper. I found this exercise very empowering, because it allowed me to reflect upon how freakin’ qualified I am for the job. I definitely encourage other writers to try it. Below are some of my entries from the exercise, consisting of the Job Posting, My Application Letter, and the Interview.

Wanted: Journal Keeper

Wanted: Journal keeper willing to make at least a one-year commitment.

This position requires someone with excellent time management skills, the ability to overcome procrastination, and a gift for seeing the beauty and meaning in ordinary life. The qualified candidate will commit to spending designated time journaling at least once a week, preferably Fridays. Additional hours throughout the week are encouraged but not mandatory.

The candidate must possess the ability to work without an “inner editor” hovering around. Whenever possible, candidate will work in solitude, and is encouraged to travel when solitude is not immediately available. Candidate will prioritize writing on Fridays over other tasks, including work and housework.

Additional qualifications include a willingness to experiment, a curiosity about the world, a dedication to personal history, and a sense of creativity when viewing the scope of journaling–images, quotes, reflections on what one has read or watched are all encouraged.

There is some flexibility in hours, although Friday writing is strongly encouraged. Candidate may work wherever she sees fit. Compensation includes an increased sense of well-being, deepened understanding of the self, developed proficiency in expression, and a greater awareness of the world in which one lives. Report directly to the self. No substitutions will be accepted.

To apply, please submit cover letter and proof of past journaling experience.

This very qualified candidate replied:

I am writing in response to your ad for a journal keeper.

While reading the description, I couldn’t help but think the job seems made for me. I have over twenty years experience in keeping journals, including day-by-day diaries, unsent letters, shared journals, and character journals. I have taught classes on journaling and writing as self-expression, and I strive to practice what I preach. I have taken various writing classes over the years in addition to self-directed study. One year, I made–and kept–a commitment to make an entry in my journal each day. I have also engaged in both personal and public blogging for over ten years. I am able to “think outside the box” when journaling and often include dialogue, quotes, poetry, and images to capture the richness of life.

As a freelance writer and editor and part-time library worker, my schedule has the flexibility required. I am happy to make writing a priority on Fridays and will strive to write throughout the rest of the week as well. I never travel without my journal, and I am happy to bring my work with me on Fridays that I may be out of town or otherwise engaged.

I am curious, hard-working, and dedicated to personal growth. I look forward to the adventure of journaling for you and would love to meet to discuss my qualifications further. Journals (paper and online) from 1990 to the present are available upon request.

Yours,

Lacey

How could she not get an interview with a letter like that? I felt that doing the interview portion was a little cheesy, but I’m glad I did it, because it gave me a good opportunity to reflect on the different “seasons” of my writing life. I set up the interview between Ms. VenOsdel (my married name) and Lacey Louwagie (my maiden name, and the one I use in all my writing.) I imagined Ms. VenOsdel dressed professionally and much too busy to have time to keep her own journals; Lacey is more free-spirited and laid back and is happy to pick up this task.

Interview Transcript:

Ms. VenOsdel: Thanks for agreeing to meet today.

Lacey Louwagie: It’s my pleasure.

MV: I have to say, I’m quite impressed with your resume. One thing does concern me–it seems your life is quite full. How do you plan to make time for this new commitment?

LL: Writing has been a high priority for me since I was 13. I have managed to make time to write despite both full-time school and later, full-time work. I understand that to keep this commitment, I may have to forgo sleep, doing the dishes, or spending time on Facebook. Those are sacrifices I’m willing to make. Additionally, within the past year I have designated Fridays as my day to focus on writing, and I’m quite good at guarding this commitment, turning down paid work when necessary. This project fits perfectly with my goal to deepen my writing practice by paying special attention to it on Fridays.

MV: Thank you for the journal samples you provided. Can you explain the long periods of silence between entries in your earlier work?

LL: Certainly. When I first began journaling, I did it somewhat on a whim. I didn’t yet fully appreciate the benefits of journaling to other types of writing. In addition, I was not yet comfortable enough with myself to write my own truth, partly out of fear of the journals being discovered, and partly because I was not yet ready to own my experiences. Ironically, I still remember the times in which I “lied” to my journal–wrote what I wanted to be true or what I felt I “should” write rather than what I really felt. I’ve found ways to write about the truth of my early experiences as I’ve gotten older. Also, as a Freshman in college I deeply studied James Pennebaker’s work and came to realize the centrality of truth-telling in my writing. I think you’ll agree that the authenticity of my journal improved after that time.

MV: I’ve taken some time to review your online journal. Can you speak to the steady decline in personal entries in your Livejournal?

LL: There are two main contributing factors to that decline. Partially, it’s due to the general decline in overall Livejournal usage, and thus a shrinking “audience” for that work. In addition, I began writing for Young Adult Catholics in 2007, and opened my writing blog in 2008. Since then, I have focused my online blogging on these outlets. Even so, I hope this position might help me jumpstart my Livejournal again. It should be noted that my history of personal journaling on paper was not diminished by my additional public blogging.

MV: Your character journals are strong from 2000 to 2006, but then decline sharply before more-or-less disappearing. Can you explain this?

LL: Personal circumstances in 2006 made it difficult for me to continue keeping character journals. Although it was painful for me to let go of, it allowed me to open up to greater depths of exploration in my own experiences, memories, and dreams. Overall, I think that my writing has benefited from this shift away from “the other,” although I’m still very proud of the work I did during that time and feel that it continues to influence my writing.

MV: Regarding the schedule–do you feel able to commit to writing intensely at least once a week?

LL: I do. It’s one of the things I look forward to about the position.

MV: And if you are otherwise engaged on a Friday?

LL: I will bring my journal with me or, as a last resort, carve out dedicated time for journaling on another day of the week. Might I direct your attention to my completion of various writing challenges, including seven years of NaNoWriMo, one November PAD Chapbook Challenge, and one NaNoEdMo? I think my success in these regards speak to my ability to see a writing commitment through.

MV: I see you also have several “incomplete” NaPoWriMos. Can you explain those?

LL: Unfortunately, I have some trouble taking myself seriously as a poet, but successfully doing a month of November poems in 2010 bolstered my confidence. The prognosis for me successfully completing this year’s NaPoWriMo is very good. [I did.] Luckily, I have no trouble taking myself seriously as a journal writer, as evidenced by my large body of work. Thus, I do not foresee maintaining motivation for this project being a problem.

MV: Much of your journaling to this point appears to be rather “free-style.” Although I’m impressed by your work, I hope you understand that this position requires you to respond to weekly prompts. Are you comfortable with that?

LL: I admit that I often feel resistance to writing from prompts. However, I’ve often been pleasantly surprised by what emerges from them, and I’ve thus come to appreciate their value. Learning to love prompts is one of the things that most draws me to this position.

MV: Thank you for your time, Lacey–this concludes the interview. Do you have any questions for me?

LL: When can I start?

MV: I’ll be in touch later this week.

Needless to say, I got the job.

NaPoWriMo: The Home Stretch!

If I can write two more poems before midnight tomorrow, I will have completed my first successful NaPoWriMo.

In an ideal world where there is always enough time for writing, my fiction would not have had to take such a blow so I could write poetry this month. But the truth is, I haven’t worked on Rapunzel or Rumpled a bit. This would have bothered me more in the past than it does now. After all, I consider my fiction to be my “serious” writing, the writing I hope to actually do something with. But I think there’s something valuable to be learned in immersing yourself in an unfamiliar form, and hopefully that will benefit my other writing. Writing poetry has been strangely freeing simply because I take myself less seriously as a poet; I don’t plan to publish poetry, and so I am able to write it for the sake of writing it. It also helps stretch my creative mind to remember that there are many ways to capture an experience or to tell a story, and I hope focusing on poetry for a month will help me remember that it’s there if I need it in the future.

With all that said, I find that NaPoWriMo gets more difficult as the month goes on, as though I have a finite number of poems within me, and at the end I’m starting to dry up. This is probably why I’ve abandoned NaPoWriMo about halfway through the month every other time I’ve tried it. So today, I’m going to share two of my poems about how difficult it’s been to keep writing poems!

Poem #26 – Dried Up

I hesitate to go to the river tonight,

fearing it’s all dried up

like the brown grass last spring,

died early in the South Dakota sun

and we didn’t have to mow the lawn

all summer.

Perhaps prayers, long walks, feminism,

Walt Whitman, Emily Dickinson

can get the water to flow.

Night falls quickly as I

wait for those first drops,

crunching too many coffee beans

and trying not to look at the dishes.

Tomorrow.

Words flow more freely from my husband’s mouth

when he is talking in his sleep

than when I pick up my pen.

He says, “Think of it like a stream,

all these words, and you’re

looking at it from above—and then,

from the side.”

I mumble, yes, yes, yes,

only longing for his silence

so I may sink back into sleep.

Now, I wait for him to come home,

hoping he remembers the way

to that incoherent stream,

all those letters rattling by

like bones.

For poem #27, I experimented with the poetic form of the triolet for the first time. It’s a poem consisting of eight lines, all of 10 syllables, with a very specific rhyme scheme. I do like the discipline that writing within a form can provide.

Poem # 27 – More Than Poetry Do I Love Sleep (Triolet)

Far more than poetry do I love sleep.

I find my blankets much warmer than words.

So this is a promise too hard to keep,

far more than poetry do I love sleep.

I silence the alarm’s insistent beep.

I am unimpressed by the songs of birds.

For more than poetry do I love sleep.

I find my blankets much warmer than words.

Writing Book Review: Chicken Soup for the Writer’s Soul

Chicken Soup for the Writer’s Soul: Stories to Open the Heart and Rekindle the Spirit of Writers by Jack Canfield

My rating: 3 of 5 stars

To be fair to this book, I don’t think I’m the right “audience” for the Chicken Soup books, or I’m just not inspired by inspiration. This book is full of stories by authors who ran up against one obstacle or another, or wrote about how meaningful writing is, or about how it had changed their life or someone else’s.

This book might have hit the mark for me more when I was sixteen, but right now, inspiration isn’t really what I need on my writer’s journey. Instead, I’m much more interested in reading books that help me deepen and broaden my skills; stories that only offer inspiration feel a little empty. I don’t want warm fuzzies, I want *results*!. In fact, I often found the stories depressing rather than inspiring, as the writers talked about one-in-a-million “lucky breaks,” or how wildly successful they ended up being. Are these books supposed to make one feel inadequate?

Also, it seems the Chicken Soup books rely on cliches, and that’s something that writers are taught to scorn, so … the intended awe and admiration for the writers within this volume’s pages didn’t really materialize.

I almost gave it two stars, but I did record a lot of quotes about writing from within its pages — so if it’s worth quoting, I guess it’s worth at least one more star.

View all my reviews

Catholicism: Are You In or Out?

Just put up my latest post over at Young Adult Catholics, which comes out of a brain that’s gotten a little mushy from a day of intense thinking and discussing. It’s about a topic that I’ve covered before — mainly this idea that we should have to deny certain parts of our identities to embrace others. I just don’t buy it.

Live From New York City!

I’m writing this from a computer lab at my temporary residence in New York City, where I’ve landed to work on the Religious Institute‘s new “faith and sexuality” guidebook on bisexuality and faith. I’m surrounded by what has been called the “dream team” of bisexual activism — wait, not just surrounded by, but part of it. At last, I can put all those days of being picked last in gym behind me. I’m on the bisexual dream team! (As a side note, I learned while preparing for this meeting that queer-identified youth tend to dislike team sports. I wonder why …)

I’m so excited to begin work tomorrow and to better get to know the amazing people from diverse faiths who are doing this work. As part of my preparation, I studied some of the current research on bisexuality shared by the institute with participants, as well as some of their previous guidebooks. And I just have to reiterate that I am so glad people are doing this good work. One of the things that struck me as I was doing my preparatory reading was that, while 65% of queer youth report being bullied in public schools, that number jumps to 75% in religiously affiliated schools. Whoa. Something is very not right about that. And I’m so glad organizations like the Religious Institute exist to start changing hearts and minds, so that hopefully, one day there will be a different connotation when it comes to religion, sexuality, and inclusion.

As we’ve introduced ourselves to one another, my best “in-a-nutshell” explanation of how “what I do” (in addition to who I am) relates to this work is that I’m a “bisexual Catholic blogger.” A few people have asked me if I’m clergy or going for my Masters of Divinity degree (the same question I was asked last week when I bought a big pile of theology-themed books at a used book sale), and I’ve said, “Nope, just a bisexual Catholic writer with a big bookshelf.” It has me thinking once more about credentials, and how one might show that she’s serious about her work without the external “proof.” But the truth remains that I’m here today because I wrote. It’s something to hold on to when, as all writers do, I find myself doubting from time to time whether writing really “matters.”

On another note, I’m still slagging through NaPoWriMo, about two days behind schedule. But it allowed me to give a couple poems to my husband for our one-year anniversary yesterday, so already it’s born great fruit.

NaPoWriMo: Ice Storm Poetry

Poem #9: Ice and Thunder

It is a time of ice and thunder

the dog cowering in the doorway

brass tacks on the glass

and trees groaning outside.

Love is an action, not a feeling

this is what Jesus taught us

Their power will be out for days

and I crumple up inside

at the thought of opening the door

on this world of ice and thunder.

Pumpkin soup and bright electricity

keep us warm against the night

The spare bed isn’t just

for watching X-files

through these hours of ice and thunder.

And love is an action, not a feeling

Pick up your cell phone

see what they need

because the power won’t be back on for days

and we have pumpkin soup in the freezer–

enough to keep us all fed

through this night of ice and thunder.

Poem #10: Ice Storm, Day 2

Stayed in the shower too long

soaking up the warmth

didn’t wipe away the steam

to see my face in the mirror.

Cold soup in the fridge

I long to fill my belly

protein bars and canned food

and too many apocalyptic novels

Trucks thunder by in the street

ice cracks

sirens wail

Every hour

I hover over the fish tank

too scared to peek inside

I use a bicycle pump

to force life into the water

Push my feet under my dog’s body

searching for his warmth.

Without the soothing buzz of

heaters and freezers

the medicine cabinet

screeches too loud.

Can’t get myself

to wrap it all up in a box

and send it to you.

I’d rather wrap myself instead.