“Have you ever been in love”?
A strange question to ask a stranger.
“Not for a long time” she told him.
He asked her why. Asked if this, not loving, had been her choice.
For a moment, she wanted to tell him yes. But his eyes asked for truth and she had outgrown her need for lies.
... Read More »
Five years ago tonight, I cried myself to sleep knowing that the decision I made earlier in the day meant giving up the thing I loved more than anything else. I would cry myself to sleep every night for the next few months, not understanding how I was going to live my life or what would become of me, just ... Read More »
She sits, posed in a moment that never moves. Eyes still, red hair soft, one fallen strand touching her nose like an eskimo kiss from god or lover she has never met.
She is silent.
Eyes tangle with second hands chasing minutes. Watching time move, increments synchronized with the beat of her heart in hollows of her chest. Breathing between ... Read More »
When I was a little girl, I was sleeping over at my best friend’s house. In the middle of the night, I woke and walked, pyjamaed and sleepy-eyed down the hallway, following some distant sound that I heard, some song. It was dark and I felt my way along the hallway, turning left into the kitchen where the moonlight made ... Read More »
She watches the moon rise, sun sitting in the back of her throat.
Feet one next to the other, crossed at the ankles. Her dress, blue flower summertime covering knees like hands cover mouths whispering secrets.
The wind blows and she watches you move.
Feet carry you back and forth, rhythmic step across concrete right angled against stucco.
Waves crash ... Read More »
Morning has gone leaving sunshine warmed windows in its wake.
Chimes blow, making music you wish you knew the words to. Her eyes are tired and she says it sounds like a symphony, the music of the wind. Maybe that is why she keeps sleeping. The symphony makes her sleep, she says.
You tell her the wind has been blowing ... Read More »
The first time I ever made a gratitude list, I truly didn’t think I had anything to be grateful for. My life was falling apart. I had destroyed everything that meant anything to me and pushed everyone so far away that I had few people left to reach out to.
Something about the distance ...
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My father and I sat talking for some hours. Hours passed quickly, the way years had.
I looked down at my hands and I remembered hers. They were always clasped, or her fingers were tapping…the sound of her fingernails was like music. I would tell her that her fingers looked like ballerinas. She would tell me ...
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5:28am in Los Angeles. She sleeps quietly in the arms of her lover. Her breath passes across his chest, moves over the landscape of his body like warm breezes over still waters.
He sleeps.
His breath is steady, it is even. It is strong, like him. Her head ascends, descends. Closer to the sky and then to the ground as ... Read More »
[originally published in Poetix. 11/08 http://poetix.net/greathouse_essay.htm]
I wrote my first book when I was six years old. It was published in a
limited edition of 1 on a small press run out of my playroom, between
Barbie’s motor home and my padded orange toy box. Today, my great authorial debut, Jean Likes Green, lives buried somewhere in my father’s house. ...
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