Cravings After the News

The appeal of silence
is an oft-understated thing;
the yearning for quiet
in the dark of day,
in the caves of work,
where echoes abound
despite the muting of
all important voices,
is a thing of passion and
vitriolic discussion and
really anything but the
very thing that is yearned for.

A deep, dark, silent space:
impenetrable emptiness,
please, I'll take two, and you
are not to follow;
get your own and do not share.

We Minions

Watching dandelion puffs burst into flying tufts
under the spitting, huffing breaths of small children,
she wonders what the dandelion puffs must think
of those who dare to submit to their silent commands:
spread our seeds, they say, with tuft-temptation;
and small grasping hands obey with the reluctance
of a cat gobbling a scrap of begged-for chicken.

Silken sun nudges its way through the leaves and
warms her hand, highlighting a small brown spot
that never existed there before--ow! She squishes the
no-see-'um bug, but its secret feast has made a red spot,
and the man-made bench crawls with pesky 'friends'
who admire her more than she admires them; how
considerate they must think humans are; to make them
a table sat with such ever-changing variety of flavors.

Walking the shady path she scents honeysuckle,
newborn to the season, vines winding along fences
whose so-convenient checkerboard wires are the ideal
handholds for fast-climbing green things, and happily
placed right where the wandering hands of walkers
can pluck a flower and slurp its nectar from a bloom
turning gold with age and sweetness. She tosses the
emptied vessel into other flowers, in thanks for a treat.

I'm going to say something controversial. Lots of people will probably gasp in shock and take an affronted step back, or call me a radical and a crazy person. But this is how I feel, and I just want to get it out there:

I don't want to look younger.

I am almost 30. I am nearing the age of no-longer-a-fresh-faced-20-something. And I like it.

One of these days I am going to get grey hair. I look forward to this, and while it may impact my income to the point doing so becomes necessary, I would prefer not to dye it.

I don't want to hide my fine lines and wrinkles. I'm okay with getting age spots, so long as I'm taking care of my health--to me sunscreen isn't an avoidance of wrinkles so much as an avoidance of cancer. And yes, I probably will wear makeup on occasion--because it's fun to do so.

Age is beautiful. Truly, awesomely beautiful.

And Americans fear it.

If it seems American women fear it more than men, well, maybe they do and maybe they don't--but they'd have a right to do so, as ingrained prejudices make it harder for older women to support themselves financially, to find role models in fiction (our cultural narrative) that aren't evil or crazy, to be considered savvy and beautiful and valuable in a society that often seems to value women for beauty more than any other form of competence.

But when people get older, they generally become more confident, more capable of seeing the bigger pictures, more willing to laugh. They're funny, they're often wise, they're usually more emotionally resilient.

Yes, there are the negative stereotypes, as well: the fear of the body's slow decline, the greater fear of the loss of ability to learn. The danger of becoming stuck in a certain way with the assumption it's the only right way. But I know more people who avoid these stereotypes than fall for them, and I wonder if we pushed ourselves as a culture to make age about learning and accepting, if we couldn't even reverse the stereotypes completely. Because I know plenty of older people who are open-minded, tech-savvy, and if not cutting-edge, then at least willing to learn.

Which is as much as can be said for any other age range of people.

If we tell people that with age comes the ability to love more, and that growing old is accompanied by the responsibility of accepting that others who are different are not innately wrong--would that make it so? I don't know, but I hope so.

When I say I don't want to look younger, when I reject the fear of age and instead welcome it, it's because I see in it a stronger, more powerful beauty than youth. Because unlike youth, age doesn't fade. It only enhances. Because the stereotypes we give it are flimsy and avoidable, while naivete and inexperience are both the hazards of and part of the definition of youth.

I want to celebrate surviving this world as long as I have. I want to celebrate my experience, and all the things I've learned. I want to celebrate age, not hide it. I find it beautiful and rich and brilliant, a trophy of passing time and a marker of things learned, mistakes made, people known and loved. No, I don't want to hide my age.

In short, I don't want to look younger.

Easily avoided

Fog encapsulates a dewy grassy field
and I wander sluggish through the mist
Droplets sitting on grass, pearly white
against misty green, wetting my hems.
Some lady with a gun shows up, yells,
aims for my head but the smell of her
tasty brain has given me warning, so
I move, and take just a nibble, just a tiny
nibble
and then I have a friend wandering the
misty field by my side, and if only we'd
made a little more tea this morning, all
this could have been avoided.

Make more tea, people.

I like camping, anyway.

I'm sitting by the fire alone
its heat soaking into my skin and
almost painful against the cold
of the room--the heater's broken.
You come back and, grimly,
shake your head, putting down
the flashlight to scoop up a
protesting cat, whom you hold
and nuzzle as you sit beside me.

I scritch her chin and she extends it
but mewls angrily, except she purrs
as she glares up at us, and when we
let her go she runs across the room
but grabs her toy and runs right back
dropping it dingling at our feet.

I throw it for her and she bolts away,
and leaning into you I say, "We'll
be okay tonight. They'll curl up with
us, under the blankets, for warmth."
You nod, and sure enough the cats
array themselves around us in front
of the fire. By the time the repairman
shows up the next day, we've made
hot chocolate twice and you've got your
super-duper spicy chili on the stove.

Obviously the milk is fine, so I have
a full bowl, and survive, grateful for
a broken heater.

Frost dreams

Watching the sun rise
while standing in a forest
catching the glimpses of sky
between trees and pine needles
made easier because of winter
You ask why I love summer
so much when it is winter
that gives us glimpses of
the sun I idolize.
Holding your hand I
take you to stand out in
a field sixty meters wide
and point to brown ground
with its twisted grass corpses
and say, "In summer these
are flowers, weeds, seeds;
not just grass but also
life reborn, a field
of sunshine wherein
we, too, begin growing."
But you laugh and dig up
a piece of dirt to show me
a seed, and say, "Too late, see?
We are even now planted, waiting,
Though we don't grow much, we
spread our roots while sleeping,
and though springs warms our
roots, it's winter that settles
us, that makes us dream of
summer in the first place."

We watch the sun rise
through slips of trees and pine
and I hold your hand, wishing
the spring's warmth would return,
but last summer, I really wanted
just a simple taste of frost.

If there is a failing, it is not in the figment, who is what it is.

Should I be
not a dream, a figment?
You chase me, little cat,
and I am but a speck floating
that no one else can see.

Will catching me bring you joy?
But how your face falls when
I am truly in your paws,
how quickly boredom unsettles
the unfathomable joy you had
when I was beyond your reach.

Was I more to you
than a speck, than a figment?
Did you think I would finish you,
that I was the last drop of paint
the painter forgot in painting you?
Or that I was an everlasting rat,
sure to please your never-ending hunger?

Should I be not a dream, or a figment?
Should I dare to be just a speck,
when you think to dream more of me?
I can give only what I am, little cat,
and that is but a moment of passing
interesting in a wall that
humans cannot fathom.