by Rebecca Bridge
HOW TO KNOW WHEN YOUR HAPPINESS IS RIPE
WITH YOUR INDEX FINGER, press down gently on the
flesh of your forearm. If it’s firm to the touch,
you’re not ready yet. But if your skin gives just a
little and then pinks up, you are perfect.
HOW TO BE THIN AS A LIE
Don’t eat, but when you do eat, don’t swallow, but
when you do swallow, don’t enjoy it, but when you
do enjoy it, don’t mean anything by it.
HOW TO GIVE HUGS THEY’LL REMEMBER
Realize that your arms are just parentheses and
between them there is a word that has no synonym.
There is simply the one way of saying it and it
means everything.
HOW TO SPEAK WITH THE DEAD
Know that in heaven no languages are spoken
because they’ve never been needed. Instead, the
departed communicate with a sort of ditting and
dahing that’s a bit like Morse code, that, of course,
sounds just like your heartbeat.
REBECCA BRIDGE lives in Seattle where she writes, mothers, teaches, creates, and so on. She is the author of the chapbook A Month's Worth of Instructional Poems recently published by V Press LC and the writing guide Clear out the Static in Your Attic: A Writer's Guide to Turning Artifacts into Art published by Write Bloody. Her work can be found in Sixth Finch, Conjunctions, the Boston Review, and many other places. She's a professor and a graduate of the Iowa Writers' Workshop.