Today I am not going to spend any money, read depressing words, write anything that is not poetry, eat any more ice cream, or pick a fight.

I am not going to play a video game or go through the receipts on his dresser or look at the word count again.

I crossed everything important off of the list and those are not my clothes hanging on the line.

I am not going to fish for compliments or throw out any research or allow my heart to go down unproductive paths that entangle…

The hummingbird feathers dim and shred as the bodies shrink into skeletons, and the nests I collect seem to be wilting with the ticks from the clock.

A mouse knocked the snake skelton from the shelf in the night and I don't know which bones go where; only the stones seem immune to decay.

Truth is stranger than fiction, and yesterday as I put sun-smelling sheets on the bed in anticipation of your return, the lizard who lives in our bedroom did a kamakaze leap from the…

My silent capsule moves through the lanes of concrete and asphalt and light.

I move my body as if I were on a bicycle, leaning left and right, swaying with the corners.

Strings of lights with entertwined misters encircle people with bright faces and bubbles of happy above their heads.

Fashion-feathered couples pass before me on crosswalks, oblivious to anything except their anticipation, evenings only begun.

Hopeful diners crowd outside the European cafe and I…

His wife was making one of her rare layovers at home so they were playing house, going through motions, one for the other, and he had no clue why.

They sat at the cherrywood table, cloth napkins and all of the dishes that would needs be washed later, eating ceasar salads while the steaks and asparagus cooled.

"You seem distracted."

He shook his tumbler of tequila on ice hard and wondered how long they were going to make nice tonight, "Yeah, a little bit, just work…

The sky has gotten heavy, low-down, grumbling and fumbling with my day, and this morning a squirrel perched on the windowsill as I read aloud, as if he were listening to the story.

I wonder what he thinks of the changes to Chapter 4.

I dreamed last night of tiny jewel-toned tree frogs that rested on my pulse points, miniature sea creatures that had been dormant for years, coming to life in the creases of my days, and vulnerable wet things that begged to be saved.

In the…

It was an innocent comment, one I read in passing, something about white chocolate raspberry truffle ice cream by Haagen-Dazs. 

I never would have paid any mind except that while I am home alone, I always buy "girl food" and white chocolate raspberry truffle ice cream resting gently in my memory sounded  like girl food as I perused the frozen foods aisle.

Holyshit, that stuff is evil, pure unadulterated, sitting-in-my-freezer-but weighing-on-my-fantasy,…

I do a lot of waiting,

and listening.

I do a lot of silent staring,

and I do a lot of daydreaming.

I do a lot of problem solving,

some on my own book,

some on his.

I do a lot of list making,

crossing out,

and drinking after six.

I do a lot of dreaming about water,

about cock,

about getting on the right bus,

about sorting through what is

worthwhile and what is not.

I do a lot of…

Add salt and pepper, and memories of  the day, seasonings of both despair and joy, a tangle of too many things, dangerous things, in my lap when I had a calf on the other end of the line ... rope, leather bridle reins, dallies around a horn covered with slick mule hide, and spurs too blunt to make my horse move faster…

I'm home.

I'm tired.

I'm dirty and parched.

I'm healed.

I'll catch up with you, soon.

The fermenting magic will bubble up,

and I ask you to be the basin,

to catch the frothy champaign

of me,

when the time is right.

Music up loud,

burger on the stove,

and I've added everything from the garden I can think of.

The purple onion smells strong,

and when the cows walk by the window,

through the lush bottoms

between here and the barn,

they seem to be stepping in time to

the music.

There is hate in the air

tonight

or disgust

or why didn't you kiss me hello

when you got home?

Cows stepping to Jewel's punk…

He calls me "darlin". 

We knew each other way back then, before either one of us had "become" anything other than 19, back before we knew that connection was more than drinking the trash can punch, party hopping, and ending up on that couch together... I do remember that couch.

That was a long time ago, and because of reconnection, now I have his voice in my ear, his story, his encouragment, and he has pieces of me, poems I've sent, and knowledge of my dirty little fantasy all…

The writing is like a wagon wheel stuck in heavy thick red mud, and it doesn't matter how hard I push, so maybe it is a good thing that I must leave it lay.

My saddle weighs more than I do, and the white horse I ride flings his head in grouch when I lift it up over my head and onto his back.

The trail is old and I've been here before and I'd rather be doing something else like scrubbing the grout in the shower with a toothbrush.

The day is still new but the hours ahead…

She liked looking at him up close, liked how his fingernails were shaped, liked how he was always losing his glasses, how his handwriting stayed in the middle of the page, how he seemed to be an island.

She liked how casual  he was, how he talked about important things as if they were on everyone's mind, and how he wasn't afraid to walk out on the forbidden just as easily as he tread the mundane.

She liked being perfectly still as a foil for his restless movements, knowing…

It's hard explain how a steer can be "too big," but he got that way by jumping over barbed wire and showing up in the most unexpected places at the most unexpected times causing us to sit slumped on our horses and say things like, "Well, hell, I guess we'll get him when we go through Cowboy Corral in the fall," and "Shit, I guess we'll stick him up on the mesa and get him in the spring," and "Goddamnit! Where the F* is that big black and white sonofabitch!?"

So we got him up here…

Taylor was prepared for demons, but not ghosts.

Way back when, on the advice of his boss, Taylor's father bought stock in Coca-cola and then a little fried chicken start-up that turned out to be named Church's, which is why he bought the country house.

Taylor knew to expect demons when he left campus and drove out, meaning to hide away for while, because after all his mother had been the one who had first decorated it, and then his dad's second wife had re-decorated it and he'd…

He doesn't have permission from anyone, not his wife, not her, not even from his own heart.

In fact, the first in that list, and possibly the last, has forbidden that he contact her, and in a fit of screaming after his last betrayal, his wife deleted the number, pressing on the button so long that his phone screamed in tandem with her.

But there is a thin strip of paper, buried deep in the pocket of an old coat, with faint digits written in pencil, and he knows it is there…

There is a mouse trapped between the glass and the screen in a window in my office and even after I pried the screen away from the frame he still won't leave.

I have not seen another human being since 9am yesterday and it will be 9pm tomorrow before I do. 

I cut Cynda, Chris, Levi, and Velma Jo from the novel and carefully set them aside so they can someday have their own book, but the incision is still bleeding.

I stood beside the garden and ate all of the ripe cherry…

There is a long and complicated explanation of why I was excited and celebratory at 9am, an equally long and complicated explanation of why I had a chili dog for dinner.

There is a long and complicated explanation of why I am no longer married to my ex-husband who is a "good ol' boy."

There is a long and complicated explanation of why I can watch a movie in bed tonight without toting my laptop from my office to the bedroom, but really people, do you want me to go into…

I know that there are miracles happening all around me and questions rock and answers are suspect.

I know that I am a writer, even when there are days when the ink dries in the nib.

I know that I would dry up like a morel in August if I had to live in the city, and I would have to find a small piece of nature to soak in so as not to lose my flavor.

I know that my family loves me the best they know how, and that love is most definitely the thing, no matter how silent and…

She can rope a calf, angle the iron just so, trail up a bull as he moves through the boulders, fix a water gap, oil her saddle, tack shoes on the front feet of her horses, open and close tight wire gates, ride point on the drive, tell a wet cow from a dry one, and give her own guess as to whether that fat four year old heifer is finally bred or whether she should go to the sale and make room for a more productive animal.

She can load, secure, start, gas up, and air up all of the tires…