Starting Over

 

The allure of a clean slate: the first vanilla ice cream 

of the year, peepers sharing their froggy angst, 

fireflies’ did-you-see-it no-there-over-there winks, 

the sharp head-clearing scent of 

fresh-washed pines, a dog’s fur 

coarse beneath your fingers.

Back indoors, how can I 

breathe, with the old everythings

crowding every room?

Toss it all into the air,

atomize it with the sheer force 

of your joy, send it higher and higher until

you no longer see it 

though it will still exist

In someone else’s fresh start

________

I found this in the Notes folder on my phone. Can you tell that I've been removing many of my things, old things, broken things, WHYYYY? things from the house this spring and summer? Can you tell that my refrain while doing so has been, "Get real, Marion!" It's worked pretty well, actually.

Yes, I'm also trying, a little, to move on from MAKING UP THE GODS to do serious work on my new novel and a nonfiction project that's more amorphous as to shape. The process isn't the same--nothing from my first novel is going to a secondhand store, for example, and nothing from REVERBERATIONS did, either. 

I'm not done with Simone, Chen, and Martin, and may never be. But other characters are politely calling my name. So I'm trying to listen.