tax season

Another obligatory entry about home, where no catastrophes are in sight, but somehow rough grains underneath your feet work their way inside your skin anyway. It's taxing. That's all I can say to sum it up. Actually, I can (and have) summed it up in a million ways, maybe even too much. But why throw away something that gives you so much material each time? As a writer, the electricity-laced air is practically my bread and butter.

I can't explain any of these million ways to anyone else. Because people understand concrete, time-measured events. And I understand only the things that are never said--the truest revealed intentions (or so I've been taught). More importantly, I understand the things that are never said to outsiders. No one practices the art of hiding dirty laundry quite as well as the one who rules this house. On this point we are vastly different--say it out loud! i always rush to campaign. there can never be enough words. words! words?

Still, I can't tell if this is an innate difference or simply the symptoms of youthful rebellion. Raw, bleeding, and fresh from the slaughterhouse, stamped with a 'best-if-used-by' date. Maybe not far from now, all the tinged blood will dry and all the meaty substance will expire. Maybe someday we'll merge in our ways of insidiousness, and my daughter will write the same lines as I do tonight, while the house drowns in things unsaid. What will I think then? Will half my life, and all my trusted words, have been in vain?

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