Sophie Lee

Dayward

  
 Pulled my face down in the mirror
 and felt a shift. Pulled the cord to close the blinds
 harder, no blue wash on the floor tonight. 
  
 The next room over feels ten degrees colder
 and the heat is past stolen, past steps. The walk
 down the hall is the slow take back of breath.
  
 The slow take of waking, like realizing you're sorry.
 It's the wrong time of year but it's all anatomy,
 your hair and your eyelids, buckwheat and hulls.

manifesto: hello, it’s the end of the month

Hi everyone, thanks so much for being here. I’m starting this website and blog out of boredom and a feeling like my life is catapulting somewhere. I don’t think it’ll be returning back to where it is right now ever again. Ok, sorry, enough of that!

My goal for this site is for it to become a calming presence on the internet. Part of it is definitely driven by egotistic desire to put all my work and art online. Idk about you, but I love looking at myself in Zoom calls. But also, I hope these pages are inspiring or at least interesting and fun. Hopefully they break the monotony of the day.

I picked “End of the Month” for the theme of the website because I always find the last couple days of every month to be times of reflection. And the website domain was available lol. But there is something about the air on those days, right? I don’t know about you, but it always feels like doors are closing and windows are opening. And they’re relaxing in a way. Ok.

If you have any thoughts, comments, reactions… I’d love to hear them. Please be nice to me 🙂 I’m scared of the internet 🙂

Five Course Meal

 A spoon. Then a flashback to July 
 because we grow berries here
 in-house and vertical. All year, jam
 and those gritty seeds in your teeth
  
 All the words babies can't say: 
 cinnamon, lox, sashimi, brussels sprouts and butternut,
 a real aerobics of the tongue and breath,
 hors d'oeuvres, sous vide, leftovers, maybe.
  
 Here come the ferns and earthy things
 like garlic stems and perilla, but elevated
 to your vocabulary. It's foreign, sure, 
 but we bring in fresh air from the seas.
  
 Something to make you feel full and alive,
 dairy or melons or sourdough. Thank the chef
 for this microdose of remorse, eating is pain
 and at once necessary. Have you heard of pâté.
  
 A bite of cake and we play you a song.
 You think of years past and how your hands 
 and jaw worked together once, those days 
 full of toil and excess. The piano closes.

44 Gardens

#1 is a bush by the sea
and a seabird nesting within.
Anything can be a garden.
#2 is a topiary: my mother
near tears after buying the wrong wooden planks
for the vegetable box last summer.
They aren't as tall as I thought, she says
but pushes on, piercing bags of soil
with her spade to overflow the box
because she is too determined and that will be her downfall.
#3 sits by the window with the most sun.
We moved our fig tree inside once we noticed
how the deer loved those fragrant leaves. And now
the figs are finally coming in, but we miss the deer.
#4 people call Oriental
when they feel threatened by its perfect shapes
and perfect control. This garden is a popular choice
for photoshoots and old couples craving a bench. I'll admit
to taking a photo near its magnificent red gate,
wondering who built it
and what they looked like.
#5 is not picturesque, but it thrives.
Grandma scavenged her garden together
and secured it with chicken wire and zip ties. A sole pumpkin grows hanging: regal and perfect.
#6 smells like death and our dog knows this too.
On mornings when the grass is wet, I catch him digging up the compost
because he is not afraid of me. I saw him once emerge
with an unbroken eggshell between his jaw.
#7 is a hackjob on the side of the road. The berries
are too sweet and too polluted to eat. I recall that my grandparents
sold berries roadside to survive. Once we made cobbler.
#8 was beautiful and belonged to an old couple.
I was called there as a Census worker and they did not speak English.
I remember they were drying seaweed on boards in the driveway
next to pots of huge beefsteak tomatoes. As I left,
some of the seaweed was carried away by the wind
and I didn't want them to think it was me.
#9 I saw on a rooftop in the city and the first word
that came to my mind was oasis. I felt bad
but that was winter anyways.
#10 was three boxes on a steep hill behind Grandma's old house.
From the upper window, the reek of grandpa's cigarettes
settled on purple beans, later to be mixed into rice,
later to be eaten by Grandpa. The same fumes cycled back
through his system until they wanted out.
#11 happened because I wanted my own snap peas.
The vines gripped the trellis like baby hands, so quickly.
#12-#28 burned down in a fire, unseen on TV.
#29-#44 are still lost in the smoke.