Friday, January 02, 2009

No Bottles To Break



No Bottles To Break -- Just Hearts

That summer, we drifted from hope
to despair, bad movies, long fights
about nothing. Zombies, reanimated
from the past, nothing left but shells,
the bodies. Nobody saw it coming. I
thought a lot about the ruins of lives
I'd seen, my grandparents' trailer,
detritus of a marriage gone off the rails.
I prided myself on having the sense
to hide my own bottles, the bruises
didn't show so much. The siren
songs of numbness, of tomorrow.
I hope to forget this.

Michelle's Spell of the Day
"Everybody has a gun in their car in Detroit." Jim Harrison

Cocktail Hour
Drinking novel suggestion: Calling Mr. Lonely Hearts by Laura Benedict is here. I heard her read a portion of it -- fantastic stuff! Prepare to be scared out of your wits! Her first novel, Isabella Moon, has also gone into paperback. Please get out and buy one or both of these books -- hey, you know you got some gift cards for Christmas; this is the time to use them!

Benedictions and Maledictions
Happy Friday! Thanks so much for all well wishes for my recovery. You guys are the very best!

5 comments:

Cheri said...

Do you have plans on MLK Day? It's the 19th and I have work off (the school is closed). Let me know.

Scott said...

Michelle,

I usually have a lot of bottles around me, but I have a large recycling bin to take care of that problem! Seriously, that was a nice piece of writing. I hope your 2009 is off to a good start. Take care!

the walking man said...

It is easy to drift, all one must do is remove the hand from the tiller. It is no longer drifting though, when the winds rise. Drifting has a more bucolic notion attached while a ship without a steady hand travels in endless circles; never going forward, never going backward, only moving round and round the center of the sucking sea.

Charles Gramlich said...

I guess we all hide our bottles to one extent or another.

Laura Benedict said...

Thanks for the nice words, sweetie! My first signing today went great. One lady tried to give me a massage, which was passing strange, but, hey, whatever.

I feel a little used though, because she bought a David Baldacci book instead of mine! xo