matchbook

I wrote this 100-word piece while I was at a residency at Holly House southwest of Seattle this past September. My time there inspired this piece in at least four particular ways:

1. One of the books I brought with me was Joel Brouwer’s Centuries, a collection of 100-word prose poems that I can’t recommend enough. The pieces are sharp and revelatory. They’re also quite funny and so much fun to read. 

2. Holly House is in the woods a little over a half mile from an inlet. The walk to the inlet, which many past residents recommended in the little notebook in the cabin’s kitchen, involved ducking beneath a gate with a No Trespassing sign. This made me uncomfortable. At one point, the path grazes past a house hidden back there in the woods, and I wondered if the inhabitants owned the land I was trespassing on. I walked delicately past that house every time, hoping not to alarm or anger them. Another thing previous residents mentioned was being woken at night by gunshots. Could the gunshots have come from the people living in this house? One previous resident claimed to have been stalked by a big cat on this path. Then there were the slugs and snakes I knew were out there because I’d seen them. I wasn’t so much scared of them, but I didn’t want to step on them and didn’t want to be startled by them. There were the squirrels that were constantly yelling at me. And, toward the end of the path, a huge hornets’ nest. I was on edge every time I walked that path.

3. The Board that manages Holly House sent me written directions to the house that were delightful in the particulars and the voice. This is what gave me the idea that directions could make a good form for a story. But directions to where? From whom? To whom? 

4. During that time, one of the other pieces I was working on involved the murky treacherousness of memory—in particular, memories of childhood.