wasps

Sitting in the Georgia sand, grains fall through my fingers while wasps whirl in harmony around my head;

My parents drink and smoke with friends, jitterbugging to Elvis around the cramped living room of a gray Army apartment;

I sit off to the side, a crumpled tissue next to me, a forgotten piece of someone else’s life.

The steps to the dance evade me. I see them. They’re in my mind but my body never hears the music. 

My skin, a thin and cracked shell, blocks light and connection, holds in feeling.

Years of faith and hope can’t cope with the broken ability to follow the rhythm of others.

Book Review: The Prague Cemetery

I finished reading a book. It's been about 3 years since I've had the energy. Who woulda thunk it?

The Prague Cemetery
by Umberto Eco

I gobbled up The Name of the Rose when it came out in 1980.

It took me 15 months to get through The Prague Cemetery.

The narrative device of two men speaking to each other via journal entries in the same diary fascinated me but it got lost in the great preponderance of names from history. Every person named in the book, except the main narrator, was a real person. I looked them up.

The story of how the fictitious / fake Protocols of the Elders of Zion became a conspiracy theory and reality for some people that led to Hitler's atrocities while intriguing got lost in the excessive details. The exhaustive minutiae exhausted me.

I worked my way through to the end because the history was compelling but it was work.

Other books read in 2019:

Brief Answers to the Big Questions - Stephen Hawking

White Hot: A Hidden Legacy Novel - Ilona Andrews

Iron and Magic (The Iron Covenant Book 1) - Ilona Andrews

SAVE THE CAT! Writes a Novel - Jessica Brody