Softball: A Flash Essay

After the last softball game I played in high school, I had trouble leaving the field. I knew it was over. I knew I could never go back. So I waited for everyone to leave and I walked out there, the lights still on, the fog forming in the outfield.

I walked around the bases with my arms out, soaring like a plane, trying to capture a moment, all moments I'd lived on that field: all the balls I'd ever caught and thrown and hit, the way I'd smell my glove just before getting ready to field the next ball, the times I'd fucked up, the times I was a hero. The day Mom pulled up in the middle of practice and I knew my grandpa would die that night. I walked around the bases just kicking up dust until I was home.

My Wedding Vows

Because I've gotten several requests, I've decided to write it here. The truth is, I joked with Mindy about pulling a privacy curtain around us while we did our vows (because it's no one's business but ours), but I got over it and said them aloud. Now, I guess, I'm shouting them.

October 18, 2008:

"I know it's cliche' to compare love, or anything to a river. But the river is all I know. It was my lover when I was young, kissing me with falling leaves, cool water licking my toes.

There was a time when i wrote my human lovers' names on pieces of paper and let the river take them under. I thought I was doing the right thing. Instead, the river ate them--devoured my relationships, swallowed me whole. But you, I never told it about you. But the river knows who I turn to now, who I spend my time with, whose rushing wind makes me tingle.

And now I cry into you. Sit by your banks in celebration. I skip rocks across you to see the ripples.

You comfort and seduce me--calling me from distant places to stare into where the water and sky meet, where the world seems ancient and unchanging. You have carved yourself into me, through me, over me. Because that is how the river and earth become one."