A Warm Room in Winter

 

I want to be 

a warm room in winter

with a comfy couch

(though bodily present

outside the confines

of metaphor)

non-judgmentally nodding

to the sad songs 

of someone’s struggles.

A steaming cup of tea

and sugar cubes

for the softening of sorrows.

Please, have a seat.

***

This Beautiful Now

Driving with the windows down

and a popsicle in my hand. 

It is the cool of the evening
after a muggy day.

The cicadas are singing
over the drone of the engine.

I am going to pickup my daughter
at field hockey practice.

There are maybe twenty girls
on the turf field lining up
to take shots on goal.

The sky above them is filled
with massive clouds
that are gradations
of pale blues and grays
with a few glowy pink spots.

Memories try to push into my
conscious awareness but
I push them back.

I want to be in this beautiful now
where time is arrested by the senses.

***

“Chernobus”

July 17th, 2026 - widespread fires from Canada have engulfed our city in dense smoke and barely breathable air.

My son just sent me this photo he took this morning while driving to his summer internship on the other side of Columbus.  He, my daughter, and I are watching “Chernobyl” on HBO and they are captivated by the whole phenomenon that played out at the end of my junior year of high school in the Ukraine.  We’re only two episodes in and they have been asking me a ton of questions about the time period and its cultural context.  

I am thoroughly enjoying it because I was a History and Political Science major at a conservative college where the Soviet Union was their favorite whipping boy and its dissolution was still a few years in the future.  And when I say “thoroughly enjoying it” I am well aware of the contradiction that that poses considering the horror of the situation and the potential it had for making a large swath of that region, to include western European countries, uninhabitable.

So my son sends me “Chernobus” and I can’t help but LOL at the creative spin he has put on this dark series we are watching together, tying it to our current pollution calamity where heavy smoke from Canadian fires has descended on our city.  He shared it in the chat that includes my daughter and so she added to the surreality of it by posting her own photo of a lifeguard getting ready to go out to the pool where she works.  These are strange times we live in…

***

Waffle House at Night

 

I walked through the door from the garage after a typical day’s work at the hospital, took off my shoes, and set my keys on the desk in the den.  Standing in the opposite doorway with the front door behind her stood my wife, a large box at her feet.  She had a curious smile on her face that threw me off.  It is a particular expression that I am not used to getting from her.  She gestured at the box and asked me what it was.

I had no idea what it was.  She and my daughter are the ones who get packages through the mail, not me.  I acted nonchalant about it but was intrigued.  When she left to pick up our daughter at school I double checked the label to make sure it was for me.  The sender was a friend and fellow psychiatrist which dialed up the intrigue for me even further.  We share common interests in writing and art (clues perhaps?).

I picked up the sizable box and took it to the dining room to begin the unboxing process.  It was securely taped and took some doing to get it open.  Inside was bubble wrap surrounding another box, also securely taped.  The suspense was building as I broke taped edge after taped edge.  Inside the inside box was more bubble wrap.   Was it something made of glass?  The wrapping materials were all over the table.

After what seemed like several minutes of careful work I found a 12x12 black square that turned out to be the back of a frame.  I gingerly flipped it over and found an image of my friend’s Waffle House painting that I’d admired from afar on Instagram.  My first thought was that he’d framed a print as a thoughtful gesture, but then the light glinted off it’s uneven surface and I realized it was the painting itself.  No way!

I let out a loud bark-like laugh and then just took it in: the brush strokes, the lit interior details, the glowing effect of street lights at night.  I took me back to days spent with Kevin McCarty, my friend and godson, in his studio apartment that was literally an art studio with paintings stacked against the walls and his easel in the middle of the room.  I would breathe in the smell of turpentine and walk over his paint-speckled floorboards.

The Waffle House holds special meaning for me.  My daughter and I flew to Florida a few years back for a field hockey tournament and we arrived at the hotel some time after midnight.  It was unseasonably cold; we were hungry and tired.  Across the parking lot was a Waffle House.  Inside was an elderly man at the cash register who peeked over his newspaper and pointed at a booth.  A waiter came 30 minutes later.

It was an odd slice of life that she was not familiar with at her young age considering the late hour, the dingy booths, the greasy food, and the paucity of employees.  Kevin liked visiting these kinds of places and befriending whoever might be there.  He even convinced a local greasy-spoon owner to let him set up his easel and paint some patrons who volunteered to sit for it.  So much caught up in so little a painting.  

***

Today is My Day to Escape

 

Today is my day to escape.

I will rise up through the ceiling

in search of elusive healing.

Knowing too well I’m a broken body

whose soul is sad and shoddy.

I need to stay and do the work

where sins and sighings darkly lurk.

My feet forced to the flaming fire.

Truth comes out, no surprise, a liar.

Sometimes it is too much to bear,

I look to flee from pain, despair.

Today is my day to escape.

But I’ll be back to try again.

Making a loss a win?

***