Musings Across Time
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In other words
It’s been almost a year, and I have not been myself since. The things I didn’t say to him. The things I’ll never get to say to him. Things I’ll never get to do with him, like spend a meal across from each other, somewhere in between where our lives are, sharing stories and photographs…
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In review
“I’ll tell you this and I haven’t told many people,” I said to a good friend hours before the close of 2018. “I don’t know if I have any resolutions, but my word to live by for 2019 is bloom.” “That’s beautiful,” they said. Then silence. What followed was a beautiful space to live deeply…
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Coffee black
I didn’t start drinking my coffee black until after my father died. Turns out that’s the way he liked his coffee each morning, rain or shine, to start his day. It happened almost unconsciously. I gathered the materials to grind my own beans, pouring them into the hopper of my manual grinder, turning the metal…
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On grief and blooming
I. I’ve spent so many years of my life wishing things were different: where I’m from, my body, being so damn shy, exploring my emotions as a man, and wishing I was a better brother/uncle/son. Much of that time trying to change to fit into other people’s vision for who I am meant I wasn’t…
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To you, my friends
We’ve reached the end—again—and I still don’t fully know how to handle the first few weeks without students on campus. The buildings slowly empty and, one by one, then all at once, the lights turn off. The music stops. The hustle simmers and bustle slows. I stand in the lobby of the 500-person building wishing…
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Holdfast
“We should hold each other more while we are still alive, even if it hurts. People really die of loneliness, skin hunger the doctors call it. In a study on love, baby monkeys were given a choice between a wire mother with milk & a wool mother with none. Like them, I would choose to…
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The order of things
On a cold Saturday in late March, I wake with words sprawling, tottering themselves into a poem off of my lips. I move quickly to write it all down. Hours later, I’ve scribbled on the backs of several old papers: a restaurant napkin, a movie pass, the comic section of the local newspaper, a notebook…
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Break, breaking
Since I moved to Indiana, life has been small musings between heartbreaks. And this is largely what growing up has been for me. The moving and the wishing people were here that cannot be and the election and the disasters that we become when we are hurt but trying to love people. The war with…
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On Friendship
“What is home but a book we write, then read again & again, each time dog-earing different pages. In the morning I wake in time to pencil the sun high. How fragile it is, the world—” -Maggie Smith, Poet When you meet several loves of your life, you don’t always know it. You don’t always…
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Home
You ever had a perfect day? A laugh-filled, legs-hurting, heart-expanding day full of walks and talks and sights kind of day. Memories in the making, best friend to your right, sky blue with clouds pillow fighting as they pass through one another. A sun tan in-the-making, the trees scattering across the horizon, the water slapping…
R. Francis Williford 