Author Archives: Sarah

What I’ve Learned in Swim Class

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How to swim (or, what I’ve learned in swim class):

 

Keep your head below water.

Be a fish. You love the water.

It’s fun to pull yourself through water. It’s like thick air. It’s like Jell-O.

Breathing is overrated and unnecessary.

Keep your goddamn head below water.

Pear-shaped people have a built-in pull buoy.

Make sure your swimsuit can handle your awkward maneuvers. Otherwise it might fall apart while you’re swimming, and then you’ll have to play it cool while diving for the lost strap.

Don’t stare at the instructor’s aging aquatic mammal body. One day you too will look this strange.

Feel the water with your forearms.

Aim your hands for the center of your fish line.

Keep your damn head below water.

Pull each stroke with your whole torso, not just your hands.

Think about every little motion.

But don’t think too much about it.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Gains and Losses

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Life is full of gains and losses.
We live, we love, we lose,
We find new loves to lose.
Sometimes we pull away from them,
Sometimes they pull away from us.

People ebb and flow
In and out of my life.
I want to keep all of them
Forever in my arms
But I can only hold
This many
Off the ground at once.
And if someone struggles to be put down
It wouldn’t be loving
To refuse them.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Why it’s important to respect nature

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Jeb was a park ranger. Bill was a sheriff.

One day Bill took Jeb out to lunch. They had a nice time. They fell in love. Marriage it wasn’t legal for them yet, so they moved to a cabin in the woods and taxidermied simple woodland creatures together. It was a happy life, until Jeb blew up.

Bill was in the cabin going through his glass eye collection when it happened. When he heard the blast, he immediately knew that Jeb was gone.

He sat quietly for a long time.

Then he got the keys to the Subaru, he got his shotgun, he got all the leftover dynamite, he packed himself a nice salami sandwich with mustard, and went to get his revenge.

The only recognizable thing he found at the site of the explosion were Jeb’s boots, standing upright in the center of a crater.

The remains of the truck were in orbit over Manitoba.

But Bill wasn’t sheriff for nothing. He was smart. He used his senses. He sniffed, he scratched, he dug, he burrowed, at last unearthing an ancient bunny burial burrow. Jeb must have unknowingly trespassed, incensing the wildlife, sealing his doom.

Bill stuffed all the dried up bunny mummies into the Subaru, loaded the burrow with dynamite, and blew their sacred area up the rest of the goddamn way.

Then he went home and feverishly worked on taxidermying the ancient bunny mummies all night, gluing them into embarrassing poses for all eternity, as he waited for the retaliation of the forest.

A scratching sounded at his door, but it was nothing. Only a stray mountain lion.

Just when dawn touched the horizon, the bunnies came for him.

Bill was prepared.

They tripped a wire in front of his cabin door.

BOOM.

Up went all the bunnies, Bill, his cabin, and six acres of woodland besides.

He got revenge. He left his mark. But he did not win, as he knew he wouldn’t. No man can defeat the Sequoia & Kings Canyon National Parks.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

going up the hill to the house, we

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going up the hill to the house, we
saw flowers that she loved, and picked them
black eyed susans, sweet williams, daisies, columbine.
we gripped them in our plump warm hands.
by the time we made it, panting,
having stopped for toads and all the small things,
we presented them to her half-wilted.
“ragweed gives me allergies” she would say, plucking one of them out.
the rest would go in a vase of honor on the kitchen table
a small token of each others’ love.

going down the hill to the creek, we
see flowers that she loved, and pluck them
dandelions, sweet williams, violets, asters.
at the bottom trickles clear water
over mossy gray rocks
and we tip her ashes in.
they are white
like her hair
pure white
like her devotion
white like the sugar in her blood
white
like the angels she adored.
they swirl the water opaque
atop it we scatter the flowers
a painter’s palette of Missouri colors
blackberry, butter yellow, sap green, slate.

the sandy ashes sink.
it takes a full hour for them to wisp away
grain by grain into the gentle landscape.
we’re used to waiting for her.
no matter how we tried to rush,
she always did move slowly,
tasting her fine wine time.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

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