an ember quickening

 I was never a girl. Pretty sure I was born full grown. The weight of the world somehow eased in when I was about four or thereabouts, whenever relative cognition set in. It hasn’t eased up since. 

The challenge with that is that I never learned to sort it all accordingly, in the correct order. And when challenged, put on the spot, I stall, a deer in the headlights of an oncoming eighteen-wheeler carrying a butt-load of manure.

The heat of August, the hum of cicada has always drawn out a stillness, a pace where I can hear my own rhythm in shallow breathing and a quickening heart. A space between lines where I can think to write. 

There are no cicada here, only an unidentifiable thing underlying the heat, an ember quickening, ready to spark.

it’s okay to wear pink

I was a redhead for so long; I didn’t realize my hair was graying

I wore gray for so long; I thought it was my favorite color

As I age, the Sun keeps my hair motley; and it’s okay to wear pink

recolha do coração

At the end of my street there’s a tiny mercado about the size of my 12 by 8 living room. The assortment of fresh, cool and dry goods is astonishing for such a small space and I wonder how anyone larger than me might maneuver. For my small frame, it’s an “enter, step, turn, shop, backup, turn, pay, leave” situation. 

The lady who attends to me speaks no English and emerges from behind a beaded curtain when I enter with a loud Ola! 

My Portuguese is more than rough, but she smiled when I first came in and stumbled through azeitona, proudly producing a large new tub of mixed olives and filling a plastic bag. 

I walked out with more olives than I could eat in two lifetimes, but ecstatic with my first purchase, alone, in a new place that felt familiar.