WORDS NOT UTTERED (HOPEFULLY). Here are a couple of phrases I hope to not utter this week, which just so happens to include both my birthday and Valentine’s Day:

– Hey! Guess what today was? (asked late at night)
- You named a star after me?

kim

WELCOME MELANCHOLIA and all of its necessary poetic tangents! (That, in case you were uncertain, was a warning for the following semi-serious meanderings.) Why melancholia? Who knows. Acacia pollen. Dust mites. Benadryl. Perhaps a constant diet of snappy witticism was making me fat (or fatuous). In any case, sometimes the dark side just rears its dark head, smiles darkly (and if its not too dark in the room maybe you can see it) and chuckles low and slow, so that it sounds like sobbing.

THAT’S HOW YOU KNOW HOW OLD I AM. I was looking in the mirror this morning and noticed that the circles around my eyes, particularly dark and pronounced today, seemed to move out in concentric waves until they met with the lines-formerly-known-as-laugh-lines parenthetically emphasizing my mouth region to the south, while also blending into my well-earned worry lines on my forehead to the north. Suddenly I thought my face resembled the cross section of a three thousand year old redwood tree that is displayed in a national forest not far from my house. There are bronze plaques based on human milestones tacked on the tree’s rings at various intervals to give perspective to the age of the tree. Staring at my face-as-cross-section-of-me this morning I wanted to place plaques around the bags under my eyes that read “Birth of Third Child” and “Near Death of Husband.” On my forehead would hang, “Cross-country Relocation” and near my “smile” lines maybe “Ill-conceived Career Switch.” And of course on my neck, where I notice deeper “turkey neck” lines, just like my mother’s, will hang the sign, “Realization That First Half of Life May Have Been Frittered Away (Bitter Pill Swallowed).”

AND NOW NOT A POEM.

Reasons Things Fall Apart
by Kim Luke

- They are poorly made.
- They are overused.
- They are abused or used for other than their intended purpose.
- They are neglected.
- They are repaired haphazardly, inadequately or “on the fly.”
- They were manufactured with the intent of short lifespan (“planned obsolescence”).
- They have been unprotected from the elements.
- They have been dropped.
- They have been subject to crushing blows, unfathomable weight, intolerable pressure.
- The seams, joints, nuts, bolts and other mechanisms of fastening have become aged and no longer perform their stated function.
- They have corroded.
- The previously well oiled has become unbearably grating, shearing off miniscule shards, precious pieces of itself with each rotation.
- They turn to dust.
- They have been charged with the inappropriate voltage of electrical current.
- Their integrity has been compromised.
- They have been taken for granted.
- They are cheap imitations of worthy goods.
- Organic materials grow in or on inorganic or surfaces.
- Conversely, organic material may perish in newly inhospitable terrain.
- They become unraveled, unhinged or unstrung.
- She stops laughing at your jokes.
- Things that need attention are left alone, those needing isolation fiddled with; those needing water, dried; drought, inundated.
- They are overanalyzed until all the nuance is stripped away, and who wants that.
- They are loaned to irresponsible neighbors.
- They fall out of warranty.

Kim