honeydunce

I want to call them split ends. The little fractures wrinkling through along the surface here or there–not really widening old
fissures, not really starting new ones. Just tiny things, crackling across like the limbs of bare trees during the
appropriate season.

The good and the bad start them. Like a couple getting on the bus and splitting up their seats so they can each befriend a new
stranger. It happened, I witnessed it. Like the new things I find out about mom that aren’t new at all–things from when I
was a kid that I can do nothing about except get angry, an anger I have to throw in a general, anonymous direction
because the hurt is so buried, so commonplace, and kind of forgotten. Like meeting my new nephew and letting him
sleep in my arms for as long as he wants. Like being sober.

I’ll stay in earth tones with a fingerprint of oil in each elbow bend. I try to remember being small, and it seems so recent and
so untouchable. What am I archiving for? At some point the memories became stories. At some point I stood in a
kitchen and made myself dinner, ate in the quiet of a rebellious sun beam. Part of me feels the need to make note of
everything. The harm is gone. I’m just taking it in.