Ordinary

No ordinary night

~ Bri Sperry-Renfrew ~ 6 Comments

Between the covers

Tom Petty lies beside me

Rolling Stone issue

It was a wretchedly extraordinary night. I wonder if I wounded Quotidian when I said I couldn’t see her in her name. Did she slink off like an animal? Did Extraordinary smell blood? She seems to be circling.

In the early morning moment when I was jolted awake by my screeching security alarm, it was no ordinary thing. Even in my son’s voice, which I have known from newborn cry to maturing man. His absent-minded distraction is not unusual these day – a girl is in the picture – but that sacred ray escaped my notice under the circumstances. The screeching was picking up speed, even as my fingers froze.

Then the phone. The calm voice wanted my Password. I’ve never used this password. My brain is packed with passwords.

Before long an urgent rapping on my front door brought me face-to-face with a badge on a blue uniform. Extraordinary is unabashedly mocking me.

 But then Quotidian appeared. At my feet. A tender tan-ish blade-shaped leaf unswept from my porch. She is a fragile and dusty wind-blown traveler. Her ancient heirs are innumerable, but the maiden voyage which landed her beneath my distraught gaze, ended with no fanfare.  She lay there. I spied her.

When the badge was gone, I swept her up with the friends who followed her, and with that simple rite, I obtained my bearings. My faith was restored. We are friends again.

Addiction

~ Bri Sperry-Renfrew ~ 4 Comments

A basket of unfolded laundry is perched slanted between the arms of the chair in my bedroom. Not an ordinary way for a laundry basket to sit – even in its disregarded state. It should be in the corner by the armoire – or in the closet under the empty plastic hangers. But there it sits. There.  All caddy-wampus and obvious – begging me to remember the solace I once took in its existence. I inhale, imagining. Fresh and faintly lavender. Soft, worn cotton – smoothing, folding, creasing, patting. Smoothing, folding, creasing, patting. Smoothing, folding, creasing, patting.  Bottle to drunk, needle to junkie, word to writer.

My taste for the ordinary and this oxymoronic word which describes it has fled. You, Quotidian, are no ordinary word. How dare you presume to climb into my jumbled, intoxicating basket?