After a week of working, I have gone to my family's house. My mother says, pull the blinds down. That room gets sun in the morning. It feels good to hear such things, to wear a pink jersey nightgown, to have taken all the shots of my black and white roll, all of friends posing, uncomplicated, easy. People kept throwing their arms around each other. Just one more. At the bar, at the banquet.
It is not hard to be happy.
Tonight a very old friend and I opened a bottle of wine. I worked on a poem in the afternoon. We went to dinner, fish wrapped in paper, beer. We were grateful to be placed in a back booth. We were grateful for music in the car. My friend said: Let's take the long way home, which is what I wanted, the windows down, the song streaming. On Paris Island. I wished the city bigger.
I thought of what I needed for one night with friends. My glasses, a toothbrush, a book, lipstick. Do I really need lipstick? I don't wear jewelry. No one buys it for me. Once, my father brought me ring after ring. Everywhere he went, he bought one: old stones set in black silver. Some of them had names engraved on the back. I have lost most of them. I never wore them. I wear something little, a strand of turquoise or jade, but then midway through the night, the chord breaks, the beads slip off. It felt so good this week to walk around with nothing--twenty dollars, a hotel room key, a pen--in a small satin bag, red on the outside, lighter pink lining like a mouth.
I feel easy, effortless, complete.
I didn't stay the night because I wanted to keep driving. I could drive all night. I just need a song and maybe a mountain. I just need a porch and someone to sit there.
The sunset was spun pink sugar. Fog on the fields.
It is times like these I wish I could make movies, make this into something everyone could see. You will have to believe me. The cropduster skimmed level with the window, over slick green corn, the sky in layers of white and pink. You will have to believe me. The truck flashed his beams. These past two days, a deer has stopped to watch me in the graveyard, on the campus, on the road, blink his light eyes, let me get close. I got close. You will have to believe me. Or I'll show you myself.
