Posted in Poetry on January 13, 2014 | Leave a Comment »
Bow in
for a short kiss on the median.
Hold on, steady tremble,
in the space between,
stop and go,
yes and no,
where hearts quake
and bodies sway.
You put your shoe next to mine,
which are smaller but carry me just fine.
The green man signals go,
and compelled,
we follow.
Posted in Prose on January 7, 2014 | 2 Comments »
Holy moly, my big brother is engaged. To be married. My pizza face, snot nosed, pigtail pulling brother. The one who used to practice his karate moves on me. Ok, so we grew up a bit. But still. Its crazy and awesome. Not only did my brother find a super sweet, interesting, smart, cool girl but she even said yes! I am so happy to finally have a sister and so happy that my brother has found his other half.
There is one unfortunate side effect to this joyous event and it’s “soon by you.” About 70 percent of the time that people say, “congratulations” they follow it up with “soon by you.” STOP IT. Really, please, stop. I know. You mean well. It’s what people say, you weren’t even thinking.
I pray with this mouth, so I won’t ever respond how I want to when you say that but I wont say thank you either.
Why?
Firstly, you are making a big assumption that I want to get married. It happens to be that someday I might. Probably not soon. But most importantly, you are taking the focus off my brother’s joyous event, which gives me great happiness, and retraining it on to what you are assuming is greatly lacking in my life. I happen to love my life right now. I like to focus on the great things I have, like my job, my friends, my independence, my health and my kick ass collection of patterned tights. When you say, “soon by you,” you make me focus on what I don’t have. Which is really unhelpful. I took a poll of my single friends who have siblings getting married and we all hate it. So please, please, stop.
And stop saying it to the childless woman whose best friend had a baby, stop saying it to someone who is job hunting, stop saying it at all.
(There is one exception. I have a good friend who I have an, “if we are still single at blah blah age, let’s have a baby making partnership” and he wrote to me, “soon by us, either separately or together.” You, my darling, are brilliant.)
