As soon as I entered the building, I forgot the name of the person I was there to see. Thinking it would help me remember, I went up and down the halls, looking at the names on the doors, but none seemed familiar. By the time I’d checked them all, and assuming I was now late for my appointment, I stopped to ask for help in a reception area that […]
Sky is my window, earth is my door. Come and be with me, come and be poor. Grass is my pillow, breeze is my song. Sit here beside me, until you move on. Sky is my window, earth is my door. Come and be with me, come and be poor. If you can love me, I’ll love you the more. And if you can love me, I’ll love you the […]
No one taught my father to swim. He jumped into the ditch and started paddling. A depression, a lifetime, a war, a family later, he climbed out of the water and waved from the bank on the other side. He waved and he waved, and faded to shade, in the flesh with the fish, a splash and a wish, a breeze, the sky, a door. And then we couldn’t see […]
Dragonfly season here is a show of grace; color; delicacy. The insects rise and pause and land with an ethereal weightlessness we don’t associate with the much larger dragonflies of our youth in California’s San Joaquin Valley, where they stood on air and rumbled about in our classrooms at school, entering and leaving freely through the open doors and unscreened windows. During the warm months, which seemed to last most […]
How much of what I tell is made up? And what part of it is true? All, all. December 30, 2021 . After the Snow A wind has come up — as if somewhere in the earth, perhaps in the ground behind the house, a door, a hatch, previously unknown, has been flung open to admit a sudden gust of hope — gust, spelled ghost, for, just as suddenly, the […]
The socks are of brown heirloom cotton, rising to the ankle, finished without dye, part kiss, part sigh. The shoes happened by, looking for a home. They wait in the closet by the door. Sometimes I hear them in the night, arguing with the whisk broom: Stop pacing. Stop waiting. Shh. Shh. When I open the door, they are mum. Each has a life, like the walls, the dark, the […]
William Michaelian 