Queen Juicy J

I’ve known for a while that this was coming. Could feel the very first tendrils of the affection creeping up into dusty, dark and closed places of my heart. Places I never believed would find love, would be open. Places relegated to cold, to empty, to the dark realities of broken dreams. But I have been caught up in my own perspective, so wound around what I could lose to realize that I’m not the only one putting it all on the line. That’s the problem with living in one’s own head. You tend to become the only one you think about in the long term and it can take a surprising amount of force to change that. I was thinking of all I could lose when he struck me with his own question. Oh. Oh I see. How funny that we two fear the same thing but from opposite ends. He asks me to swear I won’t hurt these children. That I won’t leave them and I’m caught off guard for the moment. When he asks, all I can hear is my own defensiveness in my ears, screaming all the things I stand to lose. But ...

I remember the first time I saw their little heads. I had met T for dinner and followed him home at his invitation. The house was dark and they were curled up on the couch, watching the laptop. Two small bobbles bathed in the blue screen light, huddled together. Their voices were soft, small. Deferential to the man who had just walked in. When I turned my gaze up to the painting on the mantle, they jumped up to comically praise it, and I saw immediately that they were an amusing blend of him and her. If I had known how things would grow, I would have locked in more detail. I would have savored this first meeting. But we never know what moments will be important later. The following day they introduced me to Minecraft, offered me food, and they were kind to me. Z set the example and R followed. I can still recall Z saying “I don’t mean to upset you but this level is based on hell.” Already so polite and thoughtful in his way. R kept distance but would animatedly parrot whatever Z...

I don’t remember when I had the thought first, exactly, but it was the night Z got really sick. “The mother of my children”. I was thinking of T and how he must differentiate us, his wife and I. How we have different roles. How he must perchance describe us individually. And when I had thought that, I had turned it over in my mind a few times as I often do with common phrases. Looking for a new perspective on them.  Later that night we had to go to the hospital. Z’s face was flushed and his eyes fever bright. He looked so small and lost, and I suddenly felt years of pent up emotion trying to burst free. Trying to pour out on him. He looked so tiny and in such need. On the big hospital bed he looked even more dwarfed and a little scared. How many of my siblings and nieces or nephews did I sit with in hospital rooms like this one over the years? How many little hands did I hold through bed bumpers and tried to be soothing? And yet none of them had pulled like this one. No...

I can hear it in the night. In the dark. It starts as a whisper, almost completely inaudible. Most people don’t hear it, most people live blissfully unaware of the sound, unencumbered by the knowledge that life is not static. It’s ever changing, ever evolving until it’s a banshee wail in their ears, forcing them to face it.  But not me. Not others like me. We can hear her in the night, in the dark. The first time she cracks her dry, scaly lips outside the window and inhales. Long before it’s ever a bridge I’m standing on, I hear her. I feel her. I dread her. Change is her name, but she wears a lot of disguises. A lot of masks. Evolution, transition, graduation. All pretty, colorful words that all mean the same thing. Change. And for people like me, change often heralds terror.  Change came to my grandmother and stole her mind out of her still living body while I watching in slow horror, her eyes more vacant daily until one day she forgot how to breathe... Change...

We’re in Charleston for Shawna’s birthday. It’s never ceased to amaze me how much this town feels like Boston without the angry, scowling, jaded faces of the New Englanders. It’s not crowded on the streets, horns aren’t blaring, and you can park a block from a venue easily. The theater with the murder mystery is small but comfortable. Perhaps the limit of my tolerance, but people have nice faces here. They smile more, so I don’t feel hostile. It’s a great show and I even participate, marveling at my newfound social energies. Afterwards we walk down the streets to the ice cream parlor. It’s a whole group, and I know them all in some form. What’s more is the fondness I feel for them. More so than I would have believed a year ago. Snippets of their voices float up to me, and I’m holding Matt’s hand, grinning. We’re pointing out the things that look cool, things that looks charming. Things that remind us of a life before but so much more warm and welcoming here. I could spend a multi...

“Do you prefer Jewel or Jules?” It’s my familial nickname, used by closest friends and family. It causes a warm sensation with every use, usually residing somewhere in my chest. For the last eleven years it’s been rare to hear. So rare it may have been down to a handful of times after it was near common place. It suggests a closeness I miss. It implies kindness, care and closeness. I haven’t felt close enough to many to allow it. Usually people try and I speak up, asking them not to. It can make me feel far too personal, far too intimate, preferring my much more common nickname of Jewel. My legal name is only for when I’m in trouble or for clarity’s sake. The first real moment I recall hearing it down here was from a cousin of his. Perhaps it had happened sooner but this was the first moment I recalled hearing it and not wanting to correct it. His young cousin passed me in the kitchen at a baby shower and as casual as if we were related said “Hi Jules.” I stared at the back of he...

I used to write these instead of New Year resolutions since a recap was better for starting with a vow I’ll break in a month or less. So, I suppose without any further ado, my 2018 review. January It started out pretty par for the course. I met a guy named Mike and Matt had been dating a woman named Chasity. Things were going alright, pretty lukewarm in the poly department. I finished training in my job and my truck was still bright and shined new. We saw a Southern ice storm that had us locked in our house for the first few days of the year, but things warmed up fairly quickly again. My big focus was getting a couple of fire departments online and briefed on social media, but for the most part it was pretty sedentary and we were adjusting to our new life. We  had two red-tail hawks, birds I often associate with my brother, land on the back fence of my yard one afternoon. I took that to be a happy omen of things to come. A blessing, as it were. February Things with Mike f...