I imagine my mind as a door: a light screen door, swinging back and forth in a gentle breeze. The breeze is my breath, blowing in, blowing out. My mind is the swinging door. I am watching my breath. There’s a deep pain in my hip. My stiff neck. A conversation with my old lover, …
Author: carmen
Remembering Tammy Fudge
I remember Tammy Fudge. That really was her name. As if that wasn’t enough, Tammy was gangly and awkward and kind of funny looking. She had no friends. If you sat beside her you wouldn’t have any friends either. You knew that in that dangerous and delicately balanced pre-adolescent universe, to befriend Tammy Fudge would …
The warrior dance
The dragon lives three levels down, somewhere near 140 bpm. In solid techno, the rhythm of power and rage. The essence of me it thumps my solar plexus curling, unfurling one microbeat faster than the heart can race. Hands ball into punching fists pounding feet round the fire stomp boom! boom! with the warrior beat. …
A grouchy old woman
I go to visit Rose at her assisted-living facility once a week. She is 98, tiny and frail, semi-blind and semi-deaf. She can shuffle slowly around with a walker, but needs a wheelchair to go beyond the building. As she breathes she makes a high peeping sound in the back of her throat, an effect …
My hair has authority issues
These red roots are planted in my dad’s Russian line, carrying a genetic tendency toward rebellion. My great-grandfather was said to have been a hot-headed ginger and a fine horseman, which may have inspired him to hightail it onto a Canada-bound steamer just ahead of the Czar’s army. My mother’s hair was naturally jet black …