Perforation Problems

As kids we'd ride around the neighborhood in the summer looking for someone with a swimming pool. My best friend Katie knew a kid named Jake whose parents were friends with her parents—he was always our first stop. He was younger than us and obnoxious, but he had a pool, and that made you forgive a lot. If Jake wasn't home we were pretty much out of luck, but we still had hope—hope that a pool would somehow magically materialize, hope that some forgotten-about or overlooked friend, or friend of a friend, would appear on the street, ready to invite us over to their luxurious, cool, refreshing backyard oasis. That never happened. Nicholson Elementary School, where I went to fourth grade, was within walking distance of our neighborhood. My dad and I jogged over there the few times he convinced me to run with him—through the neighborhood, around the school, then back home, where I would collapse red-faced and overheated in the shower. "It's much easier if you just ke...

I used to have a memory of sitting in my high chair in a dining room. In my head the room is slightly pinkish—not Barbie pink, but rose pink or mauve—and I'm at the corner of the table. The furniture is dark and has those flowery curves to the arms and back.There are other people there. I'm pretty sure I'm eating cake. I say "used to" because I remember feeling that this memory was certain, that it was my earliest memory. I used to be able to tell you what people were there, what people were saying, what I was doing. There might have been presents, there might have been streamers. But over time the memory has gotten fuzzier and fuzzier and now I'm not sure if I made it up or if it's actually real. I could be remembering my brother, it could be another baby, it could be something from a movie or tv show. I could be merging a bunch of memories together and adding content from my own imagination. I just don't know any more. So that memory is lost. But...

I have a picture of my grandma's hands in my head. She had arthritis, like her mother before her and like my mother, now. I know it's coming for me, too, and on especially cold days I can feel an ache in my finger joints that seems especially foreboding. My fingers right now are straight on my laptop keyboard, except for my lefthand pinky that bends to the right just above the top knuckle. I look at it and I can see what my hands will probably turn into. Grandma's fingers were a little crooked and gnarled, like someone stuck the bones back together in slightly the wrong configuration, her skin spotted with age and her knuckles swollen. But her nails were always nicely polished, usually a shade of pink. She always had her wedding ring on, a thick gold band with a diamond, and an art-deco-ish ring that had been her mother's. When she first got sick, it started in her fingers. She showed me while we sat together at the kitchen island at the lake, unwinding the gauze to r...

We have 12 minutes left before Calvin Fletcher's closes, so we're writing as much as we can without editing about a shared topic: Ball State. I didn't want to go to Ball State. I didn't really want to go to college, period, but I especially didn't want to go to Ball State. I had no opposition to higher learning, I just didn't want to leave home. I've always been a slightly anxious homebody. I like what's familiar. I don't like change. I like to hold on to what I have and have always had a heightened (and morbid?) sense of what I could lose, whether it's through death or tragedy or whatever. I had no real desire to be on my own. So I very grudgingly made plans for college, picking out schools that seemed prestigious enough and that weren't too far away from our home in Marietta, GA. But then my parents insisted I apply to Ball State, their alma matter, too. By this point I knew they were moving back to Indiana after my graduation, so I...

We never had a tree house when we were kids, but we had what we called The Fort. It was a standard wooden structure with a ladder, a pointed roof, a slide going down from the top level. It connected to a swing set, where I'd perfected what I saw as the art of graceful swinging, my legs pointed in front of me, my hair swinging and flowing behind. Whenever I swung it's like I thought I was being observed from afar. "How beautiful, how lovely!" My imaginary observers remarked as they looked out their kitchen windows. "Look how her hair trails out behind her! What an elegant and whimsical girl!" As a kid The Fort was magical—a space that was just for us. Sometimes it was for reading, sometimes for talking, sometimes for jumping wildly from the upper level to the swing rope and totally busting your finger. Sometimes my best friend Missy and I played library—this meant we carted all our books out from our bedrooms and heaved them up the ladder, where my brothe...

Late at night I'm poetic I should be sleeping but somehow can't Can't give in, can't shut down, can't let the head settle Instead I write poems like beatniks Except not good I love you isn't roses It's midnight trips to Meijer Where I look for a birthday card for my mom while you grab coffee beans (which let's be honest is the real reason it couldn't wait till morning) You meet me in the card aisle with a basket full of coffee That is love, I think now. Today I changed my profile picture from the one of me and my grandma at my grad school graduation I never liked myself in it, my face is so chubby But she looked beautiful Almost handsome, Katherine Hepburn-ish And it's the only picture I can find of the two of us together Why did I not get more pictures of me with my grandma? At some point I had to take it down No use dragging it out Taking it down doesn't take her out of my heart or my head, or my memories, or ...

It's 4:15am and the alarm clock jolts me awake—do you still call it an alarm clock when it's a phone?—and I'm up and moving before my brain even starts working again. We have a flight to catch. We've gotten in the habit of taking these early morning flights. It's exhausting but it gets you where you're going with the day still ahead of you. Within 15 minutes we're out the door, Clyde fed a super early breakfast and the key left for the dog sitter. We have our system down. Road, economy lot, shuttle, airport security, gate, get Starbucks if there's time. When I was younger I didn't consider traveling to be that important to me—traveling seemed scary. And it is, when you're traveling alone or not used to it. But I'm lucky enough to have found people to travel with, and they've made it a lot easier. Over the last five years, we've been to Hawaii, the Bahamas (twice!), Greece, Belize, New York City, and Jamaica—plus the other places I...