My ex-husband and I were dividing property. He wanted everything of value. Eventually, only the lawn mower and a couple of chipped clay pots remained.
It was my turn to pick. I chose the mower.
“You already have a lawn mower!”
“Nothing else is worth anything.”
“You are going to make me buy a $300 lawn mower so that you can sell this one on Craigslist for $75?”
“It’s your turn to pick.”
He chose the pots.
The next morning I rolled the lawnmower to his new house as a housewarming gift.
If we cannot at once rise to the sanctities of obedience and faith, let us at least resist our temptations; let us enter into the state of war, and wake Thor and Woden, courage and constancy, in our Saxon breasts. This is to be done in our smooth times by speaking the truth. Check this lying hospitality and lying affection. Live no longer to the expectation of these deceived and deceiving people with whom we converse. Say to them, O father, O mother, O wife, O brother, O friend, I have lived with you after appearances hitherto. Henceforward I am the truth’s. Be it known unto you that henceforward I obey no law less than the eternal law. I will have no covenants but proximities. I shall endeavor to nourish my parents, to support my family, to be the chaste husband of one wife,–but these relations I must fill after a new and unprecedented way. I appeal from your customs. I must be myself. I cannot break myself any longer for you, or you. If you can love me for what I am, we shall be the happier. If you cannot, I will still seek to deserve that you should. I will not hide my tastes or aversions. I will so trust that what is deep is holy, that I will do strongly before the sun and moon whatever inly rejoices me, and the heart appoints. If you are noble, I will love you; if you are not, I will not hurt you and myself by hypocritical attentions. If you are true, but not in the same truth with me, cleave to your companions; I will seek my own. I do this not selfishly, but humbly and truly. It is alike your interest, and mine, and all men’s, however long we have dwelt in lies, to live in truth. Does this sound harsh to-day? You will soon love what is dictated by your nature as well as mine, and if we follow the truth, it will bring us out safe at last. –But so you may give these friends pain. Yes, but I cannot sell my liberty and my power, to save their sensibility. Besides, all persons have their moments of reason, when they look out into he region of absolute truth; then will they justify me, and do the same thing.
When we stepped off the path through the prairie
we left a trail of bent grasses
like the trace of a finger through sand.
Some find it unbearable, the tickle,
grass against the thighs, spider webs broken
across the face, the thought of ticks.
But you and I, we can’t help ourselves.
We step into the ungroomed grass
and startle a butterfly who bumps, not once
but twice, between us before blinking away
like the bouncing ball over the words of a song.
We follow her to a small spring
that sings softly, a spring where yellow finches bathe
and watercress spreads, where sand plumes
from fissures in the rock.
My infant, pinched and swaddled,
sleeping through pots clanging, doors slamming,
curls her fingers around my finger outstretched
against her palm. It’s a reflex,
that tiniest embrace, but to me
it is a declaration, a promise,
like the wedding kiss.
evelynwestbrook 