Word Raccoon is not a coy creature, so she nudged me to share this:
I might have good news.

Today, I had my fingers x-rayed. Two on my dominant hand (I’m a Southpaw) have been swollen for what feels like forever. I’m still using the hell out of them: typing, cooking, writing, you know, living, but it would be really nice if they didn’t hurt so much. There’s a treatment option on the table if we can get a clearer diagnosis.

And yes, I have a jewelry box full of rings WR is dying to wear again. She’s already pawing at it.

That was the first hopeful thing from my doctor’s appointment yesterday. The second? She suspects there may be a different explanation for my chronic hip pain that PT has not helped. Here’s hoping. I don’t have an appointment date for that yet to confirm, but I am hopeful!

Y’all. I’ve been in pain and not been able to do what I want now for years. And now, for the first time in a long while, it feels like something might shift. Like I might get to be a new woman.

(As if I’m not already. Blame Word Raccoon.)

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The Field Trip That Brought the Words Back

You want to know how the poems returned this time?

I took them on a walk.

My hip and I marched ourselves uptown, waved to my porch buddy outside the usual coffeehouse, and said Shhh, please don’t rat me out, I’m skipping my regular spot today. He laughed and promised not to tell.

We went to the other coffeehouse, and plot twist: the owner and his family are our neighbors. Not just in the vague “we live in the same town” way.

I mean I’ve watched this man chop at a tree, ride a moped with his youngest daughter on it, sit on the lawn with his wife, grill with his girls.

I may have written a poem about the tree in the family’s yard. I know I wrote one about the moment when it looked like the owner didn’t want to leave his youngest daughter to go to work and how she clearly didn’t want him to leave. So sweet.

(No one tell them I wrote a poem, please. It might get awkward.)

And still? I didn’t connect the dots until I saw his car. Some writer, Drema. You’re supposed to notice things. 

I brought his older daughter, a barista there, a Ray Bradbury graphic novel I found in a Little Free Library, because she once said she liked his work. She lit up when I gave it to her today; I’m still glowing from her glow.

(Guess I could’ve just walked it across the street. SMH.)

Then an in-law’s cousin dropped in for a coffee and showed me photos of the train collection her late husband left behind.

I had to wipe my eyes and hug her. That kind of grief is still fresh for me, too. (And boy howdy did that man apparently love trains! That was sweet to see.)

(At the other café, the barista recently lost her grandmother. When she told me a couple of days ago, I hugged her as she had hugged me when my mother passed. This is how grief floats between places, and this is what it is to live in a small town.)

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Photo: actual photo of the butterfly mentioned below. What shall we name it?

And Then There Were Poems

Last night, I was sulking. Word Raccoon and I hadn’t written much yesterday. I started to spiral AGAIN:

Maybe it’s gone, WORD RACCOON, maybe I’m dried up, maybe I’ve used all my words. That’s it, no more, so many per customer. 

(Is this doubt going to be a regular ghost of writing poems? I don’t feel that way about fiction, like I’ve lost everything or never had it. I know it takes concentration. Dedication. That it’s a skill as much as a talent. I just don’t feel as confident or like I know what I’m doing yet with poetry.)

WR just raised an eyebrow and reminded me:

• We wrote part of a poem at the doctor’s.
  
• We lived a whole day full of lines. (Dr’s, coffee with a friend, lunch with hubby, gym…)
• And I haven’t even mentioned the porch writing yet.
  

I sat there last night, windows cracked open, lanterns beginning to glow. A couple outside their house kissed just as I glanced over (I swear I wasn’t peeping), and a cat I don’t know came up to the screen door like a summoned muse. Both of those things made it into poems. They had to.

(We don’t have pets because Barry’s allergic to most living things and possibly even me, JK, definitely allergic to Word Raccoon, but I let the cat muse pretend to be mine for a while.)

WR wasn’t thrilled, but I told her the cat could stay as long as it remained outdoors.

And then the angrier I got about not being able to write, the more alive the writing became. 

The result? Ten poems from wild-edged ones to almost prose to you-know-you-could-almost-submit that-one–today.

One features Lady Mary from Downton Abbey, because apparently that’s who showed up.

Tentative titles from last night’s wild writing sprint:

• Not Even My Doctor
  
• Ten Things that are Mine, All Mine
  
• I’m Not Trying to Be a Poem
  
• The Neighbor’s Cat
  
• Learn to Haunt in a Weekend
  
• How Tasteful
  
• Even My Titles Aren’t Playing Along
  
• I Told You Not to Say That at Brunch
• Overserved
• Back Row, Bucko
  
  As I said, some are nearly cooked, others just cauterwauling. But they’re mine. They’re here. They get added to the master list as soon as they have a (semi) permanent title.
  
  Meanwhile, Today
  I woke up at 5 AM for no good reason. So I put the time to use:
  
• Wrote an email to someone curious about MFA programs.
  
• Paid bills.
  
• Re-sent poems to a lit mag after they kindly let me know I’d mismatched them with my cover letter (note: maybe they liked the first poems if they gave me a second shot??).
  
• Walked to the café.
• Later today:
• I sat across from the town’s colorful soap store and wrote a poem while trying to remember the name of a candy I’ve definitely eaten but cannot recall.
  
• I touched bases with a friend’s mom when she came by for coffee and learned what my young friend has been up to this past year.
  
• I watched a young woman rescue a butterfly and we had a whole tender conversation about it. (She thought it was dead and was going to pick it up to collect it because butterflies remind her of her grandmother. Then she realized it was alive and put it in the planter as I watched. I know, right?)
  
• I almost yelled down the block to a stranger who said, “I live 45 minutes outside Nashville,” because I needed to know which direction.
  
• I overheard someone say, “they used to only come in black and silver,” and still don’t know what they were talking about.
  
• The bookstore owner held up a jumpsuit on a sale rack at a store just down from hers; I told her, “Yes.” It was for her granddaughter, but I stand by my vote: she could rock it.
• I reapplied my sunscreen. I remembered to hydrate. I did, technically, write.
  
• The barista asked, “Are you working on something out there?”
  “Supposed to be,” I said. And I was.
  
  But also? I was gathering. Stories. Fragments. You know, those Wordsworthian things.
• And, as I mentioned earlier, I went for an x-ray. They said it could take up to two weeks to get the results because they’re backed up. What?? What’s two more weeks, I guess. We write on. No matter what, WR. We write on.
  
  
  Today’s Poems-In-Progress (Messy Titles, Be Kind)
  Life, a Sleeping Butterfly — part prose poem, part soft sigh. (Maybe too soft? Yes, definitely toughen up.)
  
  Americana for Sale — working title only, for vibe check only. Has a bathtub and a human-sized rubber ducky.
  
  Destroying Sentences to Save Them — self-explanatory.
  
  
  Tomorrow, I’ll do more. Here’s hoping, anyway. 
  Barry has a gig far enough away and running late enough into the evening that I’m skipping it, so I’ll have him drop me at the café. I’ll walk home after creating my face off.
  (Assuming I don’t get sucked into too many irresistible conversations. Again.)
  And there’s still tonight. WR’s tapping her paw. The cat’s on the steps again.
  I have a good feeling about the writing.