Julys Were Full Of Cloudbursts, A Dime A Dozen, Sudden And Violent. On This Day I Watched A Group Of People Caught In One. They Scattered To The East And West And Ran Like Gazelles, Bolts Of Lightning Licking Their Heels. I Was Momentarily Entranced By The Movement Of Their Legs, So Swift And So Synchronized, But Then Again I Was Never Much Of A Runner. 40x60” acrylic and oil pastel on panel

During A Rare Family Trip From Montana To Canada I Got Very Sick But I Was Young And It Was Thought I Was Simply Overtired. I Had A Fever Dream In The Hotel Room. In The Dream A Yellow House Teemed With Monsters And There Was Sex And Blood And Breast Milk. The Furniture Of The House Spoke Directly To Me But I Was Unable To Understand Its Language. The Next Morning My Temperature Climbed And I Hallucinated The Sound Of An Avalanche In The Distance And Wanted Badly To Find A Gun To Protect Us All.

When I Was A Freshman In High School A Boy I Barely Knew From The School Across Town Asked Me To His Prom. He Was Cute And From California With A Face Like A Sweet Round Orange. I Had No Idea Why He Liked Me, A Morose Ghost. When We Arrived At The Dance I Couldn’t Believe How Popular He Was. Everyone Loved Him. Teen Queens Scurried Over To Throw Their Arms Around Him And Plant Barbie Kisses On His Cheek, All The While Eyeing Me With Confusion. My Date Was Kind, Funny, And Attentive....

Since I Was A Little Girl I Have Wanted To Be A Cowboy. Sometimes A Horse But Mostly A Cowboy, Just Like My Cousins Whose Lives I Imagined As Hard But Purposeful, With Points Of Leisure Pure And Wild Like Swimming In Warm Springs While Searching For Wayward Calves (This I Focused On The Most). I Imagined Them Doing This And Other Things With The Sort Of Assurance One Has In Knowing Just Where Their Bones Will Live In Death, In The Badlands Graveyard Just Past Town, And Knowing In Life They...

I Had Never Heard Of A Church Lock In And I Had Never Been To Church. A Friend Asked Me Along To A Group Party Where There Would Be Other Kids, And Only A Few Adults In Charge. Like An Oversized Slumber Party. Not Long After I Arrived We Played A Game Altogether, The Results Of Which Stated Plainly That Myself And A Few Other Unfortunate Souls Were Definitely Going To Hell. I Guess That Meant We Lost The Game. Afterwards, My Friend And The Others Belted Loud Offbeat Songs To The Heavens...

The House I Lived In Grew Around Me, Churning With Textures, Patterns, Cleanliness, Vacuum Sounds. I Thought Of It As Hungry And Tightly Wound, And I Thought Of It As An Eater Or Maybe An Absorber Of Things And Even People. The Home As A Sponge. I Imagined It Devouring Me, Chewing Me Into Pieces The Size Of The Flower Petals In The Wallpaper Pattern Or Grinding Me To Powder Like The Dust Along The Baseboards. The House As A Body. 40x60” acrylic and oil pastel on panel 2021

I Have Always Wanted To Swim With Everyone Else, In Backyard Pools, Ponds With No Name, The Blackfoot River, The Bitterroot. I Took The Required Swimming Lessons In Elementary School But They Only Left Me Fatigued And Panicky, A State I Tried To Hide While Watching My Classmates Skitter Around The Pool Like Minnows. To This Day I Sink Like A Stone. It Doesn’t Matter How Much I Want To Revel In The Sort Of Weightlessness That Deep Deep Water Offers (I Assume).

I Think I Learned Once The English Word “Eclipse” Has Roots In A Greek Word Meaning Abandonment, Named Such Because In The Moments Of An Eclipse The Sun Abandons The Earth. This Disappearance Of The Sun Used To Terrify Mankind Because The Loss Of The Big Glowing Giver-of-Life Was Too Frightening To Understand, If Only For A Moment. That Threshold Between Light And Dark Is Known To Me, A Person Who Was Left Behind In A Big Wild State When I Was The Size Of A Pumpkin And Pink As A Tongue.

Little Earthquakes In Montana Vibrate The Soles Of Your Feet, Like You’ve Stepped On A Nest Of Bees. A Tiny Hum. Their Small Presence Made Me Know A Bigger Earthquake Was Always Possible. Inevitable Even. When I Learned I Was Adopted A Big Earthquake Happened In Me. A Seismic Shift, A Change. Because There Was A Before And After, Which I Guess Can Be Said About Anything Knowable That Was First Not Known. It’s Not That There Weren’t Signs. Little Vibrations. Tiny Hums Under My Feet. 60x80”