Day 30: The Finish Line

Day 30. This is the last post for NaBloPoMo 2019. A big hug of gratitude to all of you who read my rants and rambles this month. I've got a little something extra for those of you who managed to read every post and I think you know what I mean. Seriously, I have no reason to write here if you all don't show up and engage with me. I mean .... I am nothing without you! So, really. Thank you.

I always intend to continue writing at least a couple of times a week after NaBloPoMo. I go into December with the same intention this year, because one of these years I will succeed. If you run across topics you think I should write about, please send them on. You can contact me by email or on my Facebook page. You have liked my Reticulated Writer Facebook page, right? Or you can just pop a comment under this post. Lots of ways to find me.

At a party last night, I did receive a complaint that I didn't write about vaginas often enough. I know, right? It's uncharacteristic. I guess it's the sign of our times that I ended up ranting more than I usually do. I'll do my best to get back into vaginas.

Oh, you know what I mean!

I leave you with this poem by Danusha Laméris simply because it's beautiful and I love it.



Small Kindnesses

I’ve been thinking about the way, when you walk
down a crowded aisle, people pull in their legs
to let you by. Or how strangers still say “bless you”
when someone sneezes, a leftover
from the Bubonic plague. “Don’t die,” we are saying.
And sometimes, when you spill lemons
from your grocery bag, someone else will help you
pick them up. Mostly, we don’t want to harm each other.
We want to be handed our cup of coffee hot,
and to say thank you to the person handing it. To smile
at them and for them to smile back. For the waitress
to call us honey when she sets down the bowl of clam chowder,
and for the driver in the red pick-up truck to let us pass.
We have so little of each other, now. So far
from tribe and fire. Only these brief moments of exchange.
What if they are the true dwelling of the holy, these
fleeting temples we make together when we say, “Here,
have my seat,” “Go ahead—you first,” “I like your hat.”