12 Quotes by Michelle Peñaloza

The discipline of joy is about survival.You make your own joy-this is the work my mother taught me.Little factory, little mine of reminders-find, make, joy to sustain multiple life-times: the blanket made beautifulfrom patterned found scraps;the broth of tap water and ginger and bones.What fullness my mother earned and could stuff inside an envelope to send each month back home.

The stars above us ask so little,despite our cells,coursing with their dust. To err is constant-someday, all the things we believe will seem ancient.Perhaps, we'll live more times than once.Eventually, we will all flee toward the coastline.The world we ignore most and understand leastwill call us back to give up our toenails for tails,cover our breasts with starfish and numinous scales.Tell me, how will a cellist sound beneath the sea?

This morning I woke dreaming of a manI'd not undressed in fifteen years.We may as well have written letters with goose quills.Th mind's meddling, curious - why him, why now?Still, it's fun to throw spaghetti against the wall.See what falls, what sticks. Isn't this a gamewe're always losing? The root of diminution.

Lola long dead, I still enter her old roomand find her rosary made from pressed rose petals.I cradle it in my palms, perfumingmy hands with her prayers.I don't pray. I just wonderat the fragrance a brown bead can hold,how many petals, how many roses,to make just one bead.

These rocksare the churchwhere I knelt in black worsted silkbeside my mother.Her shoulders sharpbeneath my embrace.My mother: a solid wailing.These rocks are the soilwhere she kneelsbefore the whorls of roses,kneeing before that boxas if it were my father's grave.The closed anemonesoffer their sticky blossomsas the tide washes toward me.Small bits of the coastmeet my skin,scraping my iron onto my knees.

There's a saying: those who do not swimdeep in the waters from which they camecannot arrive in the oceans they hope to go.My parents began an ocean awayand arrived in a land of lakes and snow.I've been back to their waters (is it mine, too?)but, wasn't a good swimmer.Everyone spoke underwater; I could onlyhold my breath to listen for so long.I did learn the water carries its own song.

when you sleepand I can'tI trace the lines of your facewith my eyeswondering about the waysyou might one day break my heart

How griefpummels us sharp,breaks upon us to shapethe faces we give the world,the languages we speak in secret.Here, far above the water linepines congregate and meet the ocean.Landscape climaxes against the crash of water.The white walls strikethis fawn height.

I can believe almost anything-that we beganas thoughts an ocean away carried as seeds or smog or trashacross the waterby capital by will by Godorwe beganas crumbs ferried in the beaks ofwaxwings birds of paradisewe beganas birds ourselves- migrationinstinct.Pins pierce dots and blocks of color to yoke memory to cartography:we've scattered across the world.Tiny planetsmark crumbsentire lives spunalong axes imperceptibleto souls never moved by the wind.