1998
It looked hot out, Mom wrote. She’d been in the hospital for a week and a half already, all there had been to do was look out of the window at the bright light and know that it looked hot. Heat rays danced on the hoods of cars and all over the concrete. They danced outside the hospital: A welcoming party. I was born of the sun, in the heat, under pressure…
2004
2010
The tulips didn’t bloom this year, I suppose they do not know how to without my grandmother’s watchful eye. The sun still shines on them. The rain still comes, but the tulips didn’t bloom this year. Nothing’s been the same since then. The world still spins, but things don’t bloom like they used to.
2015
The rain hit the slanted ceiling of a house that was not a home. There was a false window, a place for others to peer at me, sometimes they did. In that time, November, I wrote 50,000 words. The rain never stopped. If the rain was not outside it was in my chest. I held so much rain I had to turn the water to ink, ink to words, words that spilled across any surface I could find.
2016
I am the alchemist but I have not learned how to trade sleep for alertness. All the world is bright but upon my head there are clouds. If it doesn’t rain I cannot write, and the slanted roof hasn’t sung for me in months. The well in my chest ran dry. I cannot trade water for words. I cannot trade words for life. What else to trade for equivalent exchange?
2019
A perfectly gloomy day. I’m in the mood for it. I’m in the mood to romanticize the fog. It draped delicately across the atmosphere, smoothing the edges of all things. Even the cold has less of a bite. The mist took the rage from cold’s jaw. Its bite was so painless I could call it love. The conversion of water for words is unequal. There will never be enough words to describe living.
Lillian Hollowood:
I was born and raised in Missouri; I have yet to permanently leave the state. I’ve been writing since I learned how and I cannot see myself ending that tradition anytime soon. I can be found on twitter @LilHollowood.
