opening lines from a new work in progress

It was exactly the same. It was worse than before.

“Tara, Honey. We’ll be late.”

Honey. It was her mother’s all-purpose, love-is-a-democracy word. The one-size-fits-all-er that slipstreamed in through every conversation, near and small. “Honey,” Tara’s mother would say to the steakhouse waitress. “I like my A-1 spicy.” “Honeys,” she’d say to the neighborhood twins. “Keep your sweet pup leashed.” Honey was everybody’s name, even Davie’s whenever Davie was home, which was hardly ever since the Great Divorce had split the family in two. Davie came home on Christmas break and every other Thanksgiving, and once a week, on Tuesday evening, Davie was on the phone, calling from the turquoise hills south of Sante Fe, where Tara’s dad ran his jewelry enterprise and let Davie grow his hair shoulder-long. Tara always got the first five minutes with Davie, and then it was her mother’s turn.

“Honey,” she’d say into the receiver. “Honey, how are you?”

Summer was Tara’s mother’s break time. Her freedom spell. Her little bit of something-for-me. Summer was the season of Tara’s exile to the Cousin of Pennsylvania, better known, at least to Tara, as The Bore.

“How can you send me there? Again? Mom?”

“Honey.”

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Work in Progress and the Hummingbird Arrives

After a difficult night, a page was born, and I was scrolling through the book again, as I do, looking for clues to next moves, when from the corner of my eye I saw a hummingbird hanging in the window, as if from a puppeteer's string. I had been waiting all summer long for this elusive bird, my longing pinned to the trumpet vine that my father helped me plant by the front door. But the hummingbird came at me from the north, and she came not alone but with a friend. She was silver bellied and green backed, dragonfly colors, and I did not take her picture, for she did not stay long enough for me to garner her permission. I photographed the screen instead. The moment in time.

Gifts. Each day lived.

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