This reading is longer than 100 words, but I hope you’ll enjoy it, nonetheless.
Thanks to Evan Karp for capturing the reading on February 18.
Lucky penny
March 4, 2010They crossed the tracks in the fog, picking their way through rails and ties, one ear always cocked for the muffled, inevitable howl of an oncoming train. He left a penny there on the far rail, and the next day, they returned to find it, smooth and flat as if ironed, resting in the gravel of the embankment.
He pressed the penny into her palm, where it burned as if it still held the heat of friction and compression. He kissed her then, and her lips had never felt so lucky.
Japanese paper
March 2, 2010Torn paper can be mended with starch paste and Japanese paper, the page a facsimile of whole, but never the same as before. If my heart were paper, it would look like a collage, here a patch of Kizukiski, there a strip of Okawara, and, near the center, an appliqué of Thin Uda left over from long ago.
I know so well the risk of handing over that collage to someone with clumsy hands, and so do all I can to offer the same ritual care when I agree to take another’s heart into my cupped palms.
The travelers
February 28, 2010The travelers abound–not the ones who plan vacations to far away places, but the ones who are always plotting an escape route like a needle to a vein. The travelers break hearts by shutting them out of duffle bags and backpacks. They should bear a warning sticker: Keep Away or Proceed At Your Own Risk or Shallow: Diving Prohibited.
She spent a lifetime chasing travelers, convincing herself of safety in the middle of their dissatisfied maelstrom. It took years to learn the ones to seek were those who kept close to home, traveling the landscape of the heart.
The anticipation or the memory
February 26, 2010All her life she raced at headlong speed, outrunning one thing and trying to catch another. Always exhausted, always exhilarated, she careened with purpose, a trick no one ever understood.
Though patience terrified her, she tried it on in this instance, buttoning it up like a new dress. She spoke it aloud, and he surprised her by saying it was alright.
Which would you rather have? he asked. The anticipation or the memory?
She kissed him again, because though she could be so unconstrained with words, gratitude muted her this time.
As oxygen to hope
February 22, 2010Pecking at scraps of bok choy and bitter melon, they are simply pigeons. They scurry to the side as I pass, glancing at me sideways from red-rimmed, beady eyes.
But, from my morning view overlooking Chinatown, I watch flight transform them. In the pale morning light, flocks swirl through the air like breath, arc like an audible sigh, turn as sharply as that quick intake just before lips meet. In the sky above the lacquered signs and carved lion faces, they are as oxygen to hope.
In the open
February 20, 2010The person I always strive to be hides around a corner out of my reach so much of the time. She peeks out, laughs at my awkward movements, then disappears from view. When she’s gone, I’m bereft, adrift, but armed with enough training in theatre to appear as normal as I ever do.
But recently, she came around the corner with her whole body, embraced me, and then clutched my hands in hers.
Welcome back, I said.
I was here the whole time, she replied. But now I’m ready to stay out in the open.
100 Proof 