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the street is quiet, only birdsong breaking the breeze — a car, a house, a red door, perhaps a great dane on a rainbow leash — something friendly, like tulips or daisies, I'm not sure what else to say. we always had yellow jackets in the back yard — so we avoided that area beyond the west oak tree.

#home #AWP #AWP19

Under the blooming linden trees Gravel crunching under my feet Cows greeting meat the hand-hewn fences Pausing to smell the edelweiss and me, I pause too. Aufkirchen to Berg Germany feels like home

#home #AWP #AWP19

Home feels like exactly fifty-eight steps to my coffee shop. Home feels like Netflix in my underwear. Home feels like watering my plants after breakfast. Home feels like cookies before dinner. Home feels like never asking to hold the tomatoes. Home feels like the right setting on the thermostat. Home feels like morning sex. Home feels like touching my index finger to my kitten's nose. Home feels like music I want to listen to playing all day long.

Home feels safe. Home does not feel like other places.

#AWP #home

I moved from Los Angeles to Portland in 1995, and the new place welcomed me in a way that the old never had; I actually finished my undergrad in English here, and almost finished a memoir, so books and writing feel like home, in the home I wanted. This convention is so very much more of that, so much so that it can feel intimidating and overstimulating — almost like the isolation I ran from — but all these booths are only individual people after all, and the community and isolation are both mine to give and receive.

#home #AWP #AWP19

The smell of a candle that has just been blown out. The taste of a comfort food that brings back memories of childhood and making sure you are home for dinner. The feel of a cozy blanket to wrap up in on a cold winter night. The sight of fireflies glowing at twilight. The sound of the bluebird's song hunting for its next meal.

#home #AWP #AWP19

There's a gem of a town, Bay St. Louis, on Mississippi's Gulf Coast, that makes me melt. Like being a baby in my mom's caress — warm, safe, free. New Orleans “all cleaned up,” festivals to celebrate living, a secret that I don't really need to share. Warm sand, martinis at the Blind Tiger, no sources of stress. I melt there, easily.

#home #AWP #AWP19

The Sylvia Beach Hotel, the hotel for booklovers. No phones, no wi-fi, no T.V.— just peace & quiet to read or write, in your room named for Alice Walker, Amy Tan, J.K. Rowling, John Steinbeck*, or one of the others that may have a private deck or an ocean view. Breakfast around a large table with other like-minded people and watch the waves come & go on Nye Beach in Newport, Oregon.

* Agatha Christie, Mark Twain, Collette, JRR Tokien, Ernest Hemingway, Dr. Seuss,

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Sun-hot sticky air buzzing with the tinnitis of cicadas. The aggressive perfume of frangipani blossoms, loud as a fist to the jaw. Annoto-yellow palty pastry crumbling between the teeth, busting free the tender beef inside, punctuated by hot pepper flakes. “Sprang-a” sound of dub music warring with the amplified rant of a preacher, practising a hellfire.

#home #AWP