this_is_love kerry When I was little and standing soft-kneed in the woodchips of the nursery playground, the gnats would come bombing down into the corners of my eyes and my tiny pink hands would fly up to pry them out. Black mushy bug bodies, they were much bigger then, and I was much smaller and starry-eyed thinking of my hair as pure Crayola orange and wanting to be Cinderella. My parents tucked me in every evening and I would get up as many as six or seven times per night, wanting to linger on tiptoe behind the den window and watch their shows with them as if I sat in the middle of the couch between falling and rising chests, and between diluted Chablis and a burbly Bloody Mary. Every time my mother led me down the bare hallway to my room where I collapsed in the pastel bed and wrapped the pale yellow rag of a blanket countless times around my arms, binding them to my chest, because I slept better that way. Late elementary school: I wanted to be Lydia Deetz, I wanted my own voodoo doll, I wore the Levi’s from the boys department and sat around watching Rocko’s Modern Life or tromping through the creek in my skateboarding shoes. Write an instrumental for the soundtrack of my life and I’ll listen to it always while I tie my shoes. I was wondering about the rippled memory landscape—like skipping stones across nostalgia. I was lying on the floor floating into the eyes of the most beautiful thing in our house. She sunk back into me as well, moon-milk hazed discs not quite working properly anymore, lined in some thin layer of eggshell blue, and the eyelids they collapsed tired and then hopped back up again, the black and white lashes breathtaking in their minute size, and the curve of a slender neck and sturdy shoulders painfully silent. She is art, and her face turned to mine upside-down, and I spun off like sleep. 040407 ... blumengarten love. four letters all children can easily recognize. put them in the correct order and they form a word children can easily read and say. "love," she says, thinking of her mother and father. 040408 ... crOwl she was talking with one of her customers from alaska on the fone when i went to say goodnight. she took my goatee in her fingers and gave me a right smooch. this is love. love is like air. it's all around us. who gives you air to breathe? it belongs to no one, except for te one whose name is synonymous to love. 040408 ... kerry at 9:45 this morning the phone rang and i picked it up first ring. i knew who it was. i was sitting at my computer and he sat at his and we waited for 10:00 to hit so we could both race for Pixies tickets, he says tender-voice and eye-crust "what time did you wake up?" and we talk about what we dreamed, and we both yawn, i put my head down, i feel happy, two and a half hours later he is at my house black vest white t-shirt same pants as last night, the sun is falling in love with us, the sun is out for us he's a bad driver but it's endearing when he takes me home he walks me to my door. he doesnt even tell me beforehand because it is a ritual. we talk on the front walk near the door. we break away, he walks backwards down the sidewalk looking down, trips usually, is walking jerkily and crazy arms. it is the best part of every evening and every day that we spend time together. 040409 what's it to you? who go blather from