like being slammed in a door. some things hit you that hard.

and softer things, the day landing around you like dead leaves. the sun shone down hard to affirm the cold. a man played a steel guitar on the bridge. two cyclists pedaled past. a dog squints out into nothing, seeing with his nose, mouth pulled back in a wide dog smile. people amble on the bridge: it's sunday, we have nowhere to be. there are men fighting our wars on other continents. i always forget about that. france looks more and more likely to elect marine la pen. i cannot believe that france is likely to elect marine la pen. for the love of christ. la pen, people, did we forget him? he isn't even dead yet. if france elects the FN candidate they will have to eat everything they ever said about the us being uneducated fools for electing bush.

days follow nights. the hard thing you are doing may seem like an easy thing compared to what you do next. don't think that. some days everything cuts straight through to the center, some weeks. mary, chad and i go for a walk. i talk a lot to keep from thinking. mother and dad are house hunting on the east coast today. she says, everything's going to be alright. okay. my plane ticket to los angeles feel like a life preserver. what is there? my very old grandparents and more cars than people. a wide skien of sand stretched between the palms of the latitude twins, narrow goddesses with no angles.

the back porch was made of brick on avenida arlena and the hillside was held together by ice grass. the garden was plagued by gophers. in the white kitchen, i would get up early to eat lucky charms from grandma's small white bowls. the thick salty sweet small of the sea. pack of cards. coyotes howl in the evening. the sun always finds the water. jin rummy and five card draw with red wine, and peanuts or pretzels. the giving tree shines lacquered and very green on the old blue couch that is beautiful and very hard. not too hard on the piano! bougainvillea, azalea, geranium, rose. we set the dining room table carefully. grandma is proud to serve roast beef, she smiles. maybe she is thinking about the war, maybe she is thinking about the pretty cart where they keep the day to day liquor. the ice bucket with its shining tongs. we say grace with our hands linked. i peek while everyone else closes their eyes, we look like we are talking in our sleep sitting up at the kitchen table. the summer the neighbor's car caught on fire. cigarette. mother teaches how to get in the hammock. sean and katie come over, we run up and down the stairs with our sandy feet, red and raw from scraping across the gritty pavement between the house and the beach. our pockets full of stones and sand dollars. i french braid katie's hair. sean and i set up a shop selling old shoes from the upstairs closet. in the study, lewis and clark race across the mesas on horses. the shutters are white, and clack clack in the night when you shut them badly. papa fergie says, i'll tell you a georgie gopher story, and we all come around. hold still and grandma serves key lime pie. marriage. birthday. christmas and the tinsel everywhere, before we knew how bad it was. the days when tinsel was only gaudy and hard to clean. ice box cookies and palm trees. sand in the bottom half of the bathing suit. aunt sara says, this year i'll stop smoking into my ear while i sit on her lap. you're my favorite aunt say, i don't want you to die. and the other aunts, i added, because i felt guilty immediately, and she laughed, i won't tell. and her voice is hoarse, a little like a man's. she lost her baby when she was a teenager, she's never had another. some things never heal.