He Liked My Red Shoes

On Friday Night while Mr. Renaissance sat with Sarahbina at the dining-room-table-in-decline my middle sister bought from a place called 'Uncle Jack's Flea Market', I unloaded the dishwasher. I was wearing my favourite, most worn-in flare legged jeans. I had on these mock china doll shoes with a square toe, that are a deep red colour. Since I am so short and my pants are long and wide at the bottom, only the tips of them were visible. While I took out plates, glasses, and flatware, I tried to stay connected to their conversation about the sacrament of communion. At one point, he stopped and asked me "Kate, are those slippers or shoes?" I happily stuck a foot out to show him, and he said "those are cool!" These are the shoes I begged my mom for when I was home last, and she bought them right on the spot. No questions asked.

Bereft

On Thursday night 'Bina and I removed my braids, and what was left behind after I shed that "glory" was the person I had been before. I wept, feeling unbeautiful again. At that moment, it seemed that those braids had given me a reprieve from being ordinary, though they, themselves, were not "extraordinary." But something happened to my countenance when I wore them--they changed the properties and structure of my face from a non-sequitirish, jutting thing--and gave it a context of lines and form, softening it, altering the way people reacted to me.

You're The Voice of a Dream I Had...

I called Ms. F. last night to finalize some plans to get together, and got my beloved Mr. R., instead, who confessed to me that he is in funk because of the war, that it was taking a toll on him, emotionally, that was unexpected. And somehow this caused me to remember his chronic tendonitis, how sometimes his hands are unsteady, and that they shake when he holds a coffee cup. And I felt so tenderly toward him that I thought it might break us both, as I often feel it will. On Friday night, after he left, I watched him ride away in the mist on his motorcycle, the love I feel for him settling in me like the knowledge of multiplication facts, the periodic table, and parts of speech.