Help Me. Please Stop Time.

the window in the window by lovely lena

April 29.2006.5:43am

Dear.

Today is just beginning and so are we.
I will always remember you like this. Asleep and clinging to my collarbone.
Thank you.
I love you.
Ashley

All Those Years, They Were Here First.

untitled by tupimiquim

dear fisherman,

I hear you were a good waiter. Rolling silence around in your hands like snowballs. Walking rather than riding. Telling a story rather than refering to your outline. And I hear that you loved to fish. For people and deepwater bass. Sitting there with your feet sinking in the sand.. your wire floating across the sea. You didn’t mind the wait. and with such shotty bait. skinny worms and unexpected truths, I suppose you knew, that you would be sitting there a while.

I believe what they say about ghosts and birds. that you placed some of that patience inside of us. down in the bones where it won’t easily escape.

You waited for all those stubborn souls and shy salmon. A lifetime and not just mine. You gave us the best pieces of you. the only ones that will remain after the world catches fire. the only ones that will matter. your body, not just mine. Thank god.

Ashley

Watched The Sky Breaking on The Promise That We Made

laundromat, by eyecon

dear god.
It was the year of the early winter. We had pressed our feet against frozen crops. Sat upon hard surfaces listening to the priest praying loudly. trying to pull you down here. We were up to our elbows in tree roots and the torah. we had finished counting, on fingers and toes, the generations since you left. we thought the mountains would crack right in half. we expected golden thrones. glorious thunder. a royal war in which we had picked the winning side.

we were all waiting. And some of us not so patiently.
Maybe you were teaching us something. About silence. About faith. but we didn’t get it and it didn’t make waiting any easier.

And then, after we had all forgotten. After you had been forgotten among cynicism and semantics. you came. covered in horse shit and hay.

you must have known such an entrance would not go over well. we all laughed. Looked away said surely not. yeah right.

you came anyways.

This years winter is early again and Im not sure we are so much better. At getting it. At waiting for you. You know. We are huddled in bars and churches with our heads down and the television up. fearful of lonliness. Avoiding the silence and all that waiting. christmas songs in october. Incense and piety. We trying to pull you down here again. anxiously rapping our fingers against the clouds. We are shoving busyness into any foreseen space. Pushing fast forward. Speeding. I cant wait for my soup to cool much less for a savior.

I miss you and I don’t want to wait.

We are hopeless foot-tappers. Bags packed. Checking our laundry and burning our lips.

Even so. Come, Lord Jesus.

Ashley

Santa Claus or a Savior: Thoughts on Advent

by gabrielle blair. advent calendar

On watches or airplanes. in cups of coffeeor or calendars. We are all waiting. for presents or the poorly made chocolate behind paper doors. for santa claus or a savior.

for something better.

through the month (and each day, if I may be so ambitious) I will try and write about this particular waiting. and what, or rather who, it seems, we are waiting for.

The Time When We Counted Every Black Car Passing

diana by jeansman

Dear JP,

You drank too much and because of it I didn’t know you. I hear that you loved to talk politics and had big ears. That you were the first to hire a black pharmicist and the last to leave the drug store. That you loved telling stories.

Your sons turned out well. Though I suspect they all changed a bit when you died. One burned his house down over a boiling pot of chile and a bourbon. Others fear the inescapably of genetics and swore to God and their doctors they would never touch the stuff. Some forgot. I’m not so great around it either and I worry alot. I cant wait until I brush my teeth.

The things you did, turned around to follow you into the dark. I guess all our actions do.
You were a good father and great man. You were gentle. I don’t like thinking some company with mechanical arms and good tag lines discovered your weakness and loved it. I loved you.

I wish you could have been my grandfather. I think you would have made a good one.

Ashley