Category: Writing

See How That Works?

Terah Van Dusen3 Comments

Take all my love
and give it to somebody else
Be sure and wrap it
with a pretty new bow
Conceal that it
has been tampered with
Sell it like a special
cause you know it’ll go bad soon
Use all the things I taught you
That you never knew
Look at her the way
I asked you to
Remember to call her beautiful
even if she’s not
Remember to compliment, a lot
Yes romance matters
Yes money does too,
sometimes, a little
Take all my love
and give it to somebody else
See how that works?

To The Man in the Cheese Aisle

Terah Van Dusen4 Comments

What do
you say we
get out of here?
Let’s take this
side-glance and
run with it
We’ll go beyond
the city limits,
as far west and
north as we can go
Chasing that
idyllic place,
that feeling
Circle each
other in the sand,
Swim the first
swim of summer
in a warm creek
by the beach
as the sun
winks the day
goodbye
We will dine
on mussels
and wine
and kiss
a salty kiss
on the street
Sand in
our shoes,
Strangers upon
first glance, but
past life lovers
perhaps
Your mouth,
your teeth,
drive me
to flee

Widow Home Part II

Terah Van Dusen4 Comments

This place was my first fancy meal, in a trailer-turned-Taj-Mahal where we ate steamed whole artichokes dipped in melted butter and T-bone steak. This place was Peggy and me, sixty years apart in age, sitting Indian-style across from one another, in a mobile three blocks from McDonalds hands clasped in front of us in prayer gently singing we are siamese if you please, we are siamese if you don’t please. At that time my voice was so soft it was barely there. And while my vibrant, open, excited child’s-mind could capture these memories I have just shared with you, the reality is that I could not even mutter a thank you. Often one-on-one with Peggy I would freeze. The intimacy of the energy that was with us being too much. Tapping a place I knew little about—the relationship between woman and woman.

Throughout every moment with Peggy, or with Tina, my great Aunt, I felt pampered, like a princess-child. Like I could take on the world. Like I was somewhere else completely. Like I was someone else completely. My higher self. I could rest. I could wake and see magical things. I was in a magical world. Like a girl in a Disney movie. Like a girl on TV, in a normal home, with a normal family. Where things looked good and smelled good and felt good on your skin. Where you were rewarded for your hard work—an orange and crème popsicle for doing the dishes. Where nothing was out to get you.

After two nights or so my dad would pull up out front in the pickup-of-the-week. It would be seven p.m. on Sunday, getting dark, a school night and Peggy would say something about that and arms would raise and for the first time in two days my little white arms would get cold from standing in the sea air watching my dad defend himself, sawdust and oil on his pants and hands, him talking about a late start and needing to finish bucking the alder and I haven’t even sold it yet and I’ve got to go meet the guy tonight, actually and me noticing the blue tarp over the heap of wood in the back of the truck. Peggy would give me a dry kiss on the cheek and though there was a certain carefree comfort I felt with my dad, my eyes might sting with a tear or two as I watched that mobile-home-castle get smaller in the mirror reading objects in mirror are closer than they appear and thinking I sure hope so.

Widow Home Part I

Terah Van Dusen2 Comments

“The divine source of all life
is the fulfillment of all potential.” – Iyanla Vanzant

After grandpa choked out that night at the Best Western in Ashland Peggy had taken to moving from one end of the town to the other, and she never claimed it, but was it to escape his ghost?

First it was sell the A-frame where she and Ralph raised Moonbeam—the place with the immaculate carpentry, the knobby-pine cabinets and the gazebo in the back. Her first move was a humble move, I felt. It wasn’t the Peggy I knew to move into a mobile home, but she did. And she had a fucking tower built on to it. It was a sand-colored place with bamboo and a rock yard. Not much from the outside but on the inside it was like something out of Memoirs of a Geisha. It only had maybe two bedrooms but Peggy placed several of those oriental-style room dividers throughout, adding mystery and charm to my sixty-someodd (as she would say) year old grandmothers first Widow Home. A Widow Home being, I would later decide, a place where a woman dug into her own soul like digging into a second-hand bin of silk scarves, saying who’s in there?

This place was me opening birthday presents on a warm October day. My dad with his light blue plaid collared shirt tucked in and spotless corduroys. Who dressed him that day anyway? His eyes were bright and redless. Even my great grandparents (the good ones, not the ones who touched me) were there and I ran around in my little red and white dress that grandma Gladys made me on her sewing machine. Peggy called her “Mother”. I liked to play with the sag on her arms and she would laugh and smile sweetly. This was a woman they called practically perfect. This is a woman my 27-year-old self is certain still hangs around, acting as my own personal guardian angel. After all, it was she who in her dying bed made a reluctant Peggy promise, promise she would care for me if and when someone else could not.