#grace chapel

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Would Somebody Close That Damned Gate?

Our time left together is not so long. It feels soft in my hands and sharp in my mouth—but still, I run my tongue over and over it, kissing the hours as they pass us by, scraping the seconds with my teeth. I want to bite down, hard, bloody my tongue and break the glass, get the pain all over with in a gasping crunch. Spit the sand on the floor like rose petals on a hotel bedspread, sully and soil…

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The Mother-Daughter Problem

My mother is dead. No she isn’t. My mother as I knew her as a little girl died when I was a bigger girl but little still, my mama who put me to bed and put turkey, not ham, in my lunchbox sandwiches. That mother is dead. She once carried me so closely we couldn’t be unknit. I have lived inside the bloody cozy home of my mother’s mother, my daughter has lived inside mine. We will always be each…

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Slow Morning Glory

My yellow street was delicious to run on. One point eight miles from my parents’ driveway down to the end of the street with a wood fence and turquoise fields behind it, a perfect scoliosis lit by just two streetlights. My yellow street was near silent at five AM when I woke to plod out heavy, asthmatic miles. I’d commune with mosquitos, all of us starving for blood and air, lie down on the…

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Prayers for Slow Suicides

God, do you remember being human? Greek olives and sunburns, woven cloth against your skin, the smell of willow, sunlight spinning foxtrots through your hair, moldy bread, salt mists kissing your shins as you stood upon the grey-black water… God, was it better to be made of stars and blue velvet or white bone? God, tell me, was the wine sweet? Amen. God, what do caterpillars think about while…

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My Mother and I Have Not Spoken in Three Years

Every time I open the cabinet, my mugs, new mugs she’s never seen, ask me for our old ritual of chocolate ice cream and network TV. I can’t go to the craft store without seeing her ghost in the yarn aisle, spell my name without hearing the way she flung each letter out of her mouth on the phone, eat chili if it’s not her recipe. I can’t hear birdsong without remembering the owl-shaped…

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Kitchenheart: Bill's Peach Ice Cream

I come from the kind of old southern stock who has farmed the same land since they landed off the Mayflower, so I possess a wealth of old and secret family recipes. This one was written by great-grandma Wynette and held by her son, my Granddaddy Bill, for as long as I can remember. This is the recipe for the best peach ice cream that you ever had. This is the stuff of dreams, the stuff of family…

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Inventory of Grace

Creaky knee’d heart. Fingertips like little buds of lavender, galvanized tin bucket of a belly balanced on tiltawhirl hips, on oak root ankles, spine like the hot wet tongue of a lion. Thighs like dikes strong enough to hold up New Orleans this time and the Mississippi too. Monstera leaf hands, eyes like the slick wet backs of rain frogs, butterfly ears, mushroom nose. Milky way vulva wearing a…

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Fever

There’s something about the bath. About a perfect ambience, y’know, candles, lotions, fancy hair conditioner. Honey and lavender and mint, just picture-perfect. I know just what to do, it’s what I do, I take a bath, I put my kettle on and add a quart or so of boiled water to the tub because my cheap place’s old pipes don’t get it lobster-cooking hot. Yeah, something about how I always put a glass…

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