the big kitchen table.

you know what i want?

one of those ridiculously, unbelievably, alarmingly large kitchen tables--the kind that are long and thick and made from recycled, imperfect wood.

i want that kind of table that if need be (and why wouldn't need be?)  could host a party of twenty.  let it be big as a ship, middle of the kitchen, steering our home life through the tempestuous waters of this deliriously juicy life.

let it be covered in papers. let those papers be stained by coffee and tea. let them be slips of words i've yet to collect, half-formed ideas--fragments of scribble on white that you found i've left behind in the bathroom, the bedroom, by the table under the stairs.

let it be messy. our mess. let our mess sing. let it thrum the beat of the daily grind and subsequent salve.

let the table house stacks of things that must be read and marked up--things we'll know the words to by day's end. let those things be the marrow of our work. let those things be reminders of all that we love and that which we still foolishly believe might change the world--or our little corner of it, at least.

let the table see dinner party after dinner party. quiet ones, raucous ones, ones for just us two. let it be where we feed the ones we love. where we build the life we love. let it anchor us to a place and to each other and to hard work and late nights and lots of wine and the following morning with its warm, pooling lattes.




i don't want a life that's perfect. where every day is good. where happiness never falters and gives way to longing or loneliness or pain. that doesn't interest me. why try and hide what makes us human? show me that. give me that. offer up your humanity, your fault-line of divinity, and i will spend each day forging forward into that land where language has no meaning. to that place beyond words where we find and love  each other wholly and simply.




image.