Hello Daddy, Hello Mom: 11.7.11

I'm your ch-ch-ch-cherry bomb. I cannot get this out of my head for nothing today. I have no idea where it came from and why it won't leave. It could be worse.

It could all be worse. Hanging up the phone last week before I knew I should have, I felt like I could hear the tick-tick-tick of my mind cooling off, the little angry gears silenced, engine off. Goodbye Dad, Goodbye Mom.

(Except right now, with all that's changed, that's not how I want conversations to end. I've been blinking back tears every time I think of what we're all really not saying. Triggers are all around me. Yesterday, it was pausing at a painting in the museum and having a clear-as-day memory of my dad telling me about brush strokes, how to look at them, trace them back to the artist's intentions, immediacy springing out of paint 2 centuries old. Goodbye Dad.)

Every kind of distraction these days seems welcome. These days themselves seem welcome.