a blog of found things: words, art, photography, disappointment & hope
The street was white again,
all the bushes covered with heavy snow
and the trees glittering, encased in ice.
I lay in the dark, waiting for the night to end.
It seemed the longest night I had ever known,
longer than the night I was born
I write about you all the time, I said aloud.
Every time I say “I,” it refers to you.
– Louise Glück, from Visitors Abroad
“we are saying thank you faster and faster
with nobody listening we are saying thank you
we are saying thank you and waving
dark though it is”
– W. S. Merwin, from Thanks
I remember how seeing the shape of your mouth that first time, I kept staring until my blood turned to rain. Some things take root in the brain and just don’t let go.
While there is still time.
Sometimes, when they disappear,
men take a jelly jar of whiskey
with them, and in late summer,
when the river shrinks back
from its skin like a child ashamed
of undressing, the jars surface,
full of sand and crumpled snail shell,
in its seams. The daughters collect them,
and we fill each one—with milk, silver
buttons, crimson leaves losing color—
though never with whiskey. We’re
not trying to bring the fathers back.
– Keetje Kuipers
memoryhouse 