Hey everyone! I’m working on my memoir again after 3 or 4 years of not working on it at all. I can finally see it and know what I want it to look like. I’ll be posting excerpts here. It’s a memoir that mixes form (like Sherman Alexie’s new memoir) and it’s also hopefully somewhat like memoir master Abigail Thomas‘ work. At any rate, here’s today’s excerpt. Yes, it’s pretty much a poem (although the spacing/design isn’t quite right yet). If I’m going to try to publish this book, it’s going to be in the form of a book that I’d want to read and love.

Space Shift/Slide/Sigh

Can you feel the Loveland tides?

So little between our waves, between us: our boundaries collide:

the way I hold you/the way you hold me.

“Where did you come from?” I ask.

“From Loveland,” she replies.

All of her needs and my exasperation with being needed fades every time I ask her:

“Where did you come from?”

She looks up at me: our eyes lock together in an iris embrace: her soft reply hits the sky:

“From Loveland,” you say.

My Annie came from Loveland—sweet place between worlds where she sought a mama ready for love.

I don’t feel up to this task except for when she tells me she’s from Loveland.

Except for when she lays atop me on the couch during a late afternoon slumber and her slender bones fit/slide/slip right next to mine. She’s asleep & her fever fades as the night sky fits/slides/slips right next/past the day sky.

We are meeting for this season

as my life slip/slides toward its ending

while hers is only beginning.

I sigh into this sleep space, knowing our bones are made for each other, that our cells collide/ricochet/reverberate off each other.

My girl from Loveland, she fits/slides/slips right next to me as the sun slip/slides past this day, waving to the moon who slip/slides right into place each night.

-1.25.2018/Nancy Schatz Alton