L U M I N A * N O S T R I

 Far From Perfect In another life, I was a Latin teacher, and I have a sneaking suspicion I was the bad kind. For example, I'd  tell the students perficio was Latin for I thoroughly do, to show off, a little, but also to pontificate about my theories on life and meaning.  Like a math teacher, I'd scribble down my proof-  each red principle part with it's English meaning in green. Then, woosh! I'd spin toward them with a ring-master's enthusiasm,  after having underlined the past participle, and offer a little dramatic pause.   "So you see, class," I'd say, as if presenting the verb’s final trick to a room full of…well, teens whose hormones raced due to anything but Latin, whose eyes darted to the clocks  hidden in their pockets, tucked under their desks,  sometimes boldly behind their books, "you never want to be perfect- because having been thoroughly done ,  if you really think about it, would have to mean, obviously,  that you'...

 Souvenirs I am a things person. Give me an experience,  wide and vast, porous and leaking,  and I'll bottle it up. Shape it  like a little boat. I'll go find  a mold to withstand that-one-time's heat.  I want to put things on the shelf,  heavy in my palm, where I might pick them up from time to time and feel the wind of it, whatever it was, blowing through my hair. Wouldn't you rather something textured, sized, with weight?  A bobcat figurine or a coin.  So much heavier that unreliable collage of Memory— the one that shows up  when she wants to, the one who makes an Irish exit.

Our House (Draft 2. Final draft on substack ) A house starts as four lines, a red, crayon, box shape with my five-year-old hand's signature stroke. Three decades later, my eldest daughter would switch to green to draw her triangle top. Her younger brother will add twin teal smaller squares, will divide them into fourths.  My mother's eyes should recognize how these windows represent the promise  of known depth, but they don't. The only thing I know? My youngest, a daughter, will not be satisfied. Not until, passing that five-year-old-threshold, she scrawls pink and purple flowerbeds on the right side, on the left. In time, for all of us, the shapes move, the colors layer. Our crayon melts into something we, a kaleidscopic household, can't quite control. Something neither my nose nor their father's can quite smell. Sure, whether here or there, time will be measured in dollars and cents.  Perhaps, like on our broken marriage license, each name on the le...