Of Stillness and Storm by Michele Phoenix

Author:Michele Phoenix
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Thomas Nelson
Published: 2016-11-14T05:00:00+00:00

ah, ren … your husband is home. i want to hear from you every minute of every day, but your husband is home. it’s right and good for you to be out of touch.

i’d love to see you as a mom and wife. i have images in my head of what that might look like, but every time i have a ‘yes, that’s it’ moment, i realize the person in the scene is 18-year-old you. in my memory, you’re arrested at that age. i know from your family picture that you’ve changed. but the ‘voice’ in your messages … it sounds the same. same relationship to language. same purpose to love and to know. you make me reach for deeper words and strive for clearer vibes. all while drinking in the simple something of your prose.

my agent, dan, and i are heading downtown in a couple hours to meet with a group that’s interested in my stuff. the original plan was to have one of my pieces included in a calendar they’re publishing to raise funds for the brain tumor association, but somebody with the bta saw my stuff and asked if i had anything else. i’m a little dubious about what i’m hearing—after all, i majored in disappointment and got a degree in cynicism. but dan said something about an aidan dennison collection, all proceeds to the bta. coffee-table style. asked me if i’d be okay with that—no compensation, but serving a good cause. i thought about it for—oh—a fraction of a second. then i heard myself say, ‘i’ll be dead by the time it’s published anyway.’

that set me back a little. to hear those words out of my mouth. i’ve thought them before, but saying them. that felt like reaching a whole new level on my dig to six feet … part of me wanted dan to say, ‘come on, what are you talking about? you’ll be standing in stockholm receiving a nobel prize long after this thing is published.’ there’d be two problems with that statement. one, there’s no nobel prize for visual arts. two, no i won’t.

there’s a finality about death that’s too extreme for me to grasp, most of the time. there’s so much in life that can be undone that i can’t fathom something that’s just so … finished. no command-z. no undo button. just … the end of everything. it doesn’t hit me often, but when it does … like when i catch myself projecting what i’ll do next summer. or next week for that matter. it bends the edges of my universe, i guess. and of my courage too.

so dan and i are heading downtown to see if the multi-artist calendar can become a single-artist collection to gather dust on coffee tables and drop some cash into brain cancer research. i’m not gonna lie. i want it to work out. there’s something poetic about posthumous publication …

it’s the middle of the night there (i looked it up). i hope you’re sleeping as i type.

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