A Sunday Trip on Words

“How did,” I ask Jeremiah: my partner of some ten or a dozen years, “my last piece sound to you?”

I’m referencing a short essay I wrote about the desert.

“Sparse,” he says and pauses, “which is apt since the desert is as well.”

I shift my body to face his as he drives down a familiar neighborhood road, past the house that burned two weeks ago and still has a yellow police caution tape around it. I notice the house. Gawk at it. Say a prayer to a non-god that these people will find peace. Divert my attention away from it almost as quickly.

“I love that,” I say to Jeremiah.

As we drive, we are surrounded on both sides of the avenue by lush green lawns and clover. The recent thunderstorms and hot days have teased out the growth of all the plants. Left to its own growth, the yards would soon swallow the houses. Nothing left of them besides burnt-out windows, Adirondack chairs.

“So,” I think aloud to him, “if I write about here, Tennessee, now, I should have the words tumbling over one another, clamoring on top of one another.”

“Yes,” he says. And I know he might not truly care about words in the same way that I do. But he will still talk to me about writing because I become like the girl he met a long time ago. Full. A little crazy. Alive.

We pass by the Tornado damage from last year, and the trees are still toppled, pass signs for firewood: FREE. YOU CUT, YOU HAUL. The weathered signs have been up for months.

Jeremiah’s window is down so the warm breeze comes in and with it, scents of life: different than two months ago. The downed and broken trees are overgrown with brambles, ivy, blackberries now flowering. And I wonder if I can ever portray lush wildness, or if I only know how to write about the desert.

One word at a time. Sparsely.