the once project

hello, friends.

the once project is back up and running. I took a step back from it on may 28, 2020 and picked it back up today, may 29, 2021. from this point on, you can find it over here, on my site. 

as for this space, I'm not sure. well, not yet. but I do feel the rumblings of something.

117//365

once

I saw myself tumbling down subway steps. knees buckling, limbs folding soundlessly beneath me. I saw it all-- the reactions of people standing on the platform, my bag following its own airborne trajectory. the way I might fight to recover balance, pretend it did not happen. I knew I would never stand at the top of another set of stairs and not imagine this very scenario.

115//365

once

I watched as they walked into the woods together, towards the old cemetery that has always felt like a secret. I heard them laughing from across the field, heard them move through the trees, knew they'd return before dark with stories both true and false.

112//365

once

I took a walk down edgewood avenue, past familiar bus stops and bars, past new murals and the remains of old ones. I stopped to make small talk with the owner of a barbershop, who invited me inside for a few minutes. the soft metallic hum of the clippers, the occasional sound of the broom, layers of conversation. if I could have tucked myself into a corner there for the rest of the afternoon, I would have. 

111//365

once

I watched a painter work in new orleans, near the iron fence that encloses jackson square. she used a cardboard palette to mix her paints-- greens, red and yellows like fresh rainbow chard, the sounds of beyonce coming from what I could only assume was a phone. her voice muffled, as if she were singing through a sock. across the way, amber light on buildings, a scene that begged to be painted.

106//365

once

we spent an afternoon on the humid streets of downtown athens, georgia. flipped through records at wuxtry, books at avid. checked to see what was playing at the old movie theatre. chased ezra's neon yellow rubber ball as it pinged across a busy street. meandered down narrow brick-paved alleyways into vintage shops stacked floor to ceiling with musty goods. considered a quick lunch at waffle house but remembered the time ward found a spoon in the bathroom there and decided against it. landed instead at the burger place around the corner and as we sat out on the patio at the table with the poppy red oilcloth covering and waited for our food, decided athens might just be the perfect place for us to retire.

105//365

once

I watched a crowd of sunflowers bow their heavy heads as the sun dimmed and felt my own shoulders drop an inch or two. 

104//365

once

I stopped in chinatown for pork buns and moon cakes but left with a silk cherry red fan instead.

102//365

once

while my dad stood at the kitchen sink and washed dishes, a cardinal flew right up to the window, landed on a sliver of frame, looked at him for a few seconds, and flew away. I've never seen a cardinal do that, he said. never. 

he didn't say it, but he didn't have to. I knew what he was thinking. she'd been gone for nearly half a decade but, still. we saw her every once in a while. a crimson blur at the window, a soft pink opaline sky. mom. 

99//365

once

I stood in cold, cold river water and felt wholly alive.

I don't know how to explain the magic. the magic of walking through cold, clear water to find the falls nestled in the pueblo of nambe. I don't know how to tell the story of how we just sort of landed there, on a whim. on a friday afternoon in october, the day before a wedding of a friend.

I don't know how to explain how unprepared I was. how I didn't know I'd be wading through water in my shoes, that I'd be passing through narrow canyons on foot while light bounced off edges and wrapped itself around corners. how the whole thing made me feel strangely immortal, how in that moment, with my feet submerged in the water and the sun squarely in my eyes, I felt alive, fully and wholly and wildly alive.

96//365

once

I peered inside the windows of the saint roch chapel in new orleans and found a small, soft chorus of prosthetic limbs. the insides of another southern poem, a hundred different stories (at least), dangling.

95//365

once

I stood behind him as he held his phone to the sky. I wanted to see how he saw the sun's melt, how he'd fit the moment into that small rectangular frame. all color and quiet and sky for a second, maybe two. felt like forever. 

94//365

once

after barbeque sandwiches and bottled cokes, we walked the trail that runs alongside the train tracks in athens, georgia and stumbled onto the place where kids might sometimes go to have their senior pictures taken because they think it will look cool.

93//365

once

we passed on old twistee treat on the way to the beach. tucked behind a shuttered bank, oddly situated in the parking lot of an old strip mall-- as if the businesses had been built around it, in spite of it, as if the great concrete cone had refused to move.

when the time came for ice cream, I fought hard for the twistee treat. even though there were fancier, far more superior ice cream shops to choose from, even though the protests from the group could be heard for miles, I dragged them all to that little twistee treat. I have zero regrets. 

92//365

once

I found myself at a farmers market in santa fe, new mexico on a crisp saturday morning in october. wondered how many tomatoes I could feasibly fit inside my suitcase. or how many I could eat before I got on the airplane that would carry me back home. 

91//365

once

we let the weeds grow in the backyard, mostly out of laziness. in the meantime, a patch of wild daisies popped up and brought such unexpected joy I couldn't bare the thought of losing them. when the time finally came (that is, when the weeds were nearly to our knees), I asked if we could please mow around the small patch. 

and so afterwards, there it stood. a clump of daisies in a spot so random, it looked like a mistake. a missed patch, a sloppy lawn job. but upon closer inspection: an accidental cutting garden, an small island of happy, short-lived as it was. 

90//365

once

I hung out the car window as we drove by the old kodak building downtown atlanta on ponce and prayed it would not be devoured by the gentrifiers.

85//365

once

while walking in central park, I spotted what I hoped my future might look like. 

84//365

once

on the way to a family wedding in indiana, we stopped in cincinnati, the city where we first met and fell in love. we wanted to show the kids this monumental little piece of our history, wanted them to see where things began, but as we approached the apartment building that overlooked the city, the site of our infamous, storied beginning, as we looked at each other and got all soft in the eyes about it and told the kids the story, they made fart jokes in the back seat of the car.

and I just really wondered what my nineteen year-old self, the one who first lived in that old apartment building and really thought the cute guy who lived down the hall was just a summer fling, would have thought of this scene, of this particular moment in time. if she could have peered into her future, I wondered what she would have thought. of that car full of love and yelling and laughing and fart jokes at the wrong time and soft eyes and road trip music and years and years and years of marriage and life an love. I really wondered.

81//365

once

in an industrial park just north of downtown chattanooga, I listened to a skater tell stories about rings.