Now Playing: “Brave” by Sara Bareilles. Because my heart apparently doesn’t think I’m brave enough and dear god, what would it have me do next? I cannot write any braver. I’m about to roll up my scroll and go home.

Saturday’s fundraiser left both me and Word Raccoon, my writing sidekick, with burnt noses and sun-drunk hearts. After I dabbed Noxzema on her tender pink snout, she curled up and drifted off, as if the day’s sweetness had worn her out completely.

She found the table of vintage children’s books that were free for the taking, the organizers desperate for someone to love them. The covers were worn soft, the pages smelled faintly of attic dust and long-forgotten bedtime stories. She wanted to bring them all home. To build card houses, to paper the walls with their covers, to string them along the fence like flags. I let her fill one small box, and now we’re savoring them, one by one and NO, WR, WE WILL NOT BE DECORATING OUTDOORS IN A WAY THAT CAN BE SEEN FROM SPACE. (At least not this week.)

Blueberries for Sal pulled at something deep.
The black-and-white illustrations, the old canning jars with rubber gaskets, the wood stove that must have been impossible to regulate. It made me think of my grandmother’s kitchen in my mother’s childhood. Of blackberry picking with my dad. Of heat shimmering on the pavement, loose dogs barking at our heels, the too-rich potted meat sandwiches I didn’t appreciate then.

Wordsworth said: “Poetry is the spontaneous overflow of powerful feelings: it takes its origin from emotion recollected in tranquility.”
Maybe nostalgia is poetry’s quieter cousin, the kind that stands at the edge of memory, teetering between truth and sentiment.

Today, I’m just here, noticing, writing in a coffeeshop that is 79 degrees inside, and I’d rather write here because of all the light. Actually, it makes me feel like I’m in Europe where air conditioning is not guaranteed in coffeeshops.

I’m letting the burnt noses, the books, the memories, the small glances that catch in the corner of my eye fill me up. It’s not about retreating, if I can help it. It’s about staying present, even when it’s tender, even if some days I’d rather just toss rocks into a pond.