Emma is a writer and artist from Seattle. She currently resides in New Orleans. ︎
ig: @heavensimulator666
website: heavensimulator.squarespace.com
01. This Beautiful Thing Happens Everyday
Miracles can happen to anybody. Miracles happen every day, to people like you and me. I miss you desperately. My mother called me on the phone and asked if I was happy. I saw an egret on the bank of the lake and I started crying. A mother sang to her newborn baby. There are miracles all the time, I promise you.
I watched a father teach his son to ride a bike the other day. He pushed him forward, punched the air triumphantly, “Look at you! Look at you! I’m so proud of you honey!” I watched them for a moment from behind the fence and I thought about that question that you asked me. “Tell me about a time where you experienced god, recently.”
I am trying to imagine a life where I am very happy. I am walking to the park and feeling the weight of my arms swinging. I bought another book by Sheila Heti. I sat on the bench and listened to the ducks, hundreds of them in the trees and in the water and all of them, chests puffed out, screaming. I wonder what it is they are trying to tell me.
In the morning, I wake up on the side of the bed where you used to sleep. I have taken a vow of celibacy. I have paralyzed the muscles in my jaw so I stop grinding my teeth. I am doing all these things, executing acts of tenderness, the way that one prepares for company by cleaning up parts of the house the guest will never see.
Miracles happen all the time, they could happen to me. When the phone rings, I imagine for a moment that it is you before I look at the screen. I know this is how it’s supposed to be. I am glad for all the things I’ve done, the person I’m becoming. I drove across the bridge to Mandeville last week. Water on either side, it’s like we’re floating. You can be a saint for twenty-four miles if you can afford the toll, it’s never free.
I saw a man teaching his son about the trees, “Do you see it?” He lifted him up close to the branch, to the sky, to the open air above me. I look up, I stand still, I am listening. The citrus trees are getting heavy. The oranges and the lemons and the tangerines. We are so lucky. Miracles happen all the time, I feel the ground shift underneath me. The roots are breaking through the street, the leaves are weeping, releasing the pressure that built up inside bodies.
The ducks are rinsing themselves clean. The egret spreads its wings and takes off in another direction, sending ripples through the water underneath. Everything is green. There is a church covered in ivy, an eagle nesting in the branch of a live oak tree. I walk the path and listen to the sound of the reeds banging together, the way the cattails release cotton puffs into the breeze. I remember being young, my father pulling one down close so I could see. “When I was little,” he would tell me, “We used to blow on them like dandelion fluff, and make a wish for something,”
There is a museum in my head of every kind thing that has been done for me. There is a museum in my head where you said, “my prayers for your happiness never cease,” you cradling me in bed the night before you leave, “iloveyouiloveyouiloveyou” like the ducks in the lake, trying to make me believe.
The breath of god in all our lungs, in all the fruit on all the trees. Miracles happen all the time, the feeling of the first time you ever laid eyes on me. When I was young, I blew the seeds off of a cattail and wished for everything to happen just like this, exactly.
Miracles can happen to anybody. Miracles happen every day, to people like you and me. I miss you desperately. My mother called me on the phone and asked if I was happy. I saw an egret on the bank of the lake and I started crying. A mother sang to her newborn baby. There are miracles all the time, I promise you.
I watched a father teach his son to ride a bike the other day. He pushed him forward, punched the air triumphantly, “Look at you! Look at you! I’m so proud of you honey!” I watched them for a moment from behind the fence and I thought about that question that you asked me. “Tell me about a time where you experienced god, recently.”
I am trying to imagine a life where I am very happy. I am walking to the park and feeling the weight of my arms swinging. I bought another book by Sheila Heti. I sat on the bench and listened to the ducks, hundreds of them in the trees and in the water and all of them, chests puffed out, screaming. I wonder what it is they are trying to tell me.
In the morning, I wake up on the side of the bed where you used to sleep. I have taken a vow of celibacy. I have paralyzed the muscles in my jaw so I stop grinding my teeth. I am doing all these things, executing acts of tenderness, the way that one prepares for company by cleaning up parts of the house the guest will never see.
Miracles happen all the time, they could happen to me. When the phone rings, I imagine for a moment that it is you before I look at the screen. I know this is how it’s supposed to be. I am glad for all the things I’ve done, the person I’m becoming. I drove across the bridge to Mandeville last week. Water on either side, it’s like we’re floating. You can be a saint for twenty-four miles if you can afford the toll, it’s never free.
I saw a man teaching his son about the trees, “Do you see it?” He lifted him up close to the branch, to the sky, to the open air above me. I look up, I stand still, I am listening. The citrus trees are getting heavy. The oranges and the lemons and the tangerines. We are so lucky. Miracles happen all the time, I feel the ground shift underneath me. The roots are breaking through the street, the leaves are weeping, releasing the pressure that built up inside bodies.
The ducks are rinsing themselves clean. The egret spreads its wings and takes off in another direction, sending ripples through the water underneath. Everything is green. There is a church covered in ivy, an eagle nesting in the branch of a live oak tree. I walk the path and listen to the sound of the reeds banging together, the way the cattails release cotton puffs into the breeze. I remember being young, my father pulling one down close so I could see. “When I was little,” he would tell me, “We used to blow on them like dandelion fluff, and make a wish for something,”
There is a museum in my head of every kind thing that has been done for me. There is a museum in my head where you said, “my prayers for your happiness never cease,” you cradling me in bed the night before you leave, “iloveyouiloveyouiloveyou” like the ducks in the lake, trying to make me believe.
The breath of god in all our lungs, in all the fruit on all the trees. Miracles happen all the time, the feeling of the first time you ever laid eyes on me. When I was young, I blew the seeds off of a cattail and wished for everything to happen just like this, exactly.
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