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Indigo Vales

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Indigo Vales

Tag Archives: dark

For Evelyn

08 Tuesday Feb 2022

Posted by Kristine in Uncategorized

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amwriting, dark, poem, sunrise

I don’t want to write in the kitchen with the light on

It’s too bright

Sunrise soon in my bedroom

but it’s still dark too dark in this other room to write.

Candles 50 solve the problem

but the soot and the scent overpower

nothankyou

So I’ll just keep getting up to check on the

black sky

indigo sky

blue sky

just the right sky

Like a child,

Now? Now? Now? How ’bout now?

Can I turn off the light

see ink on the page

legible

legit

Yeah now it’s time,

and I will spend the rest of the day

complaining

It isn’t dark enough to rain–

or to write.

Hallows Eve 2018

31 Wednesday Oct 2018

Posted by Kristine in Uncategorized

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brother, candy, change, childhood, children, costume, dark, Halloween, hallways, memory, parents, sister

It is said that today, this evening is when the veil between the worlds is thinnest, those who have passed may walk among us.

Today I think about the recent talk I had with my son in the waxing hours of night. We talked long about my Dad–his grandfather–who we both love and miss. He had questions and worries and pain and I answered best I could, and those answers said aloud reaffirmed my beliefs. It all felt right.  Perhaps he went back to sleep, but I stayed awake then slept in the middle of the day, my heart ringing with memory.

This morning I close my eyes and remember Halloween of the past, when me and my brother were kids. Mom got us our costumes at the store, but I do not remember which one. The cellophane came unglued from the cardboard boxes they were packed in by the time we got home.  I am 100% sure I tried mine on and played with it before Halloween and got yelled at.  We lived in a large development, apartments galore, and you would think we would come home king and queen of Halloween candy, but no. You would be wrong.  Mom told us every year we could pick one. ONE. apartment house outside our own to trick or treat and that would be it for the day. Oh? Did you not know that we only trick or treated during the day? Yep. Too dangerous at night we were told. So we donned our paper-thin costumes, slipped on our masks, and knocked on our first door.  It was exciting! Neighbors answered and tucked candy into our plastic pumpkins, a ritual that was wonderful outside the usual nod as we passed each other on the stairs, and I got to peep inside where they lived!   One year I was Lady Liberty, another Cinderella, and my brother was a Firefighter and Chewbacca, if memory serves. Most neighbors gave us a good haul, and some slipped us pennies instead of candy. Our marauding ended at the kitchen table where Mom let all the air out of our tires: She picked through every piece of candy and threw out just about half of it because she said it didn’t look right.  In those days there was fear of razors in candy apples and LSD on paper candy, so anything that looked open she tossed, no negotiating, THAT was the real horror!  We clanked the pennies into our matching glass piggy banks which have gone I don’t know where…  I used to eat candy corns color by color, first the tip, then the orange, then the base, one small bite at a time, because I’m really not sure why.  And once we used to have a contest to see who could make their candy last the longest, and I think we both hit the “Thanksgiving” target.

One thing we don’t remember is Dad being with us.  It was always Mom shuffling behind us down echoey dark hallways with us.  I’m pretty sure it’s because Dad was working, or he was sleeping because his shift was in the middle of the night.

Dad moved us from the city filled with apartment complexes where Halloween candy and pennies and neighbors and friends were abundant to a field in the middle of nowhere, darker than hell and nobody around.  Trick or treating became dead to us because there was no way Mom and Dad was going to pile us into the car and take us into “town” where the rest of the kids were trick or treating. Halloween died when we moved upstate.

When I became a Mom we used to keep a bowl of chocolate treats for kids who might come to visit us on a route that is used for fast-moving traffic. One kid came. Probably the best part of Halloween was Mike making elaborate costumes for the kid–he was Halloween king of the cul-de-sac!  Okay, maybe the giant tarantula the guys stuck up on the roof was pretty cool, too. Cool but icky as it bobbed in the breeze.  But that’s Halloween, eh?

Last year I had a bowl of candy ready but no one comes to this apartment complex. Nobody came so I gave it all to the realty office across the way.  This year I have nothing to offer but hope and protection for anyone who comes by.

My how the times change.

A Storm Day

12 Monday Feb 2018

Posted by Kristine in Uncategorized

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amwriting, birds, dark, life, pain, purple pen, Shogun, spring, storm, wind

The morning is so dark as I write, but I look forward to the promise of rain. I finished the last page of a journal, one that took too many years to write and the wind and rain have come. A battleship passes. Foghorns are lowing. The winds are gusting at 30 driving rain from the North, Northeast. It is a writing day, a living day.  In the early morning hours gray but still the finches (sparrows?) were active, flitting, calling in words I cannot mimic. They were rejoicing in the rain, here are the worms and the grubs and they can feel the spring coming, I haven’t heard their ruckus in so long, how I missed them, missed windows open, hearing wind in the pines.   And now they are silent in the darkness of 11:41AM, wind gusting, a candle burning for someone who doesn’t know her way in the dark yet.

Empty beach chairs sit on the balcony holding court
Arms touching discreetly
Waiting for rain.
*******

My Pilot pen, made in Japan (Samurai?)
A full container of ice cream placed carefully in the garbage
Because I couldn’t unstick the lid (all the tricks were tried)
And my old-lady hands and fingers hurt all night and day from the trial
Well, at least I can still hold the pen.

The light is brighter now, I feel I need to get moving. Henry’s birthday is tomorrow. Light is calling. I know the temperatures will fluctuate and I will still need piles of blankets and layers of clothes before my skin can be exposed, no matter how glorious the air from the south feels. My little toes know frostbite, and seagulls have an agenda.

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