Home > Author > Chelsea Rathburn
1 " Squatting in the coppery mud of the drainage ditchbehind my cousin’s house, we searched for fish,saw none. We found a speckled frog instead,unspooling a long, gelatinous threadof black eggs in the water. Then fire ants—my feet a blaze of pain, a fumbling dance,and fact and memory begin to stutter.What happened next? What curses did I utter?And how did I ever get back over the fence?I remember having a kind of reverencefor the whole affair: the pity I got, each bitegrowing large and lustrous as a pearl, my tightand swollen toes. I must have liked the pain.What else would make me prod again, again?A whole week hobbling barefoot on the lawn,and still I missed the welts when they were gone. "
― Chelsea Rathburn
2 " Your paperwork in, it’s like the morning aftera party, the shaken survey of damage,a waste of bottles where there was laughter.It all seems so much more than you can manage:the accusing cups and stubbed-out cigarettes,the sun assaulting the window, your throbbing head.It’s not enough to face your own regrets(though they’re coming back fast, the things you said)because someone’s trailed bean dip across the table,someone’s ground salsa in the rug with his shoe.So you start to clean, as much as you are able,and think how far those hours have fled from you,before the hangover and your sour tongue,when you felt lovely, and infinite, and young. "
3 " London returns in damp, fragmented flurrieswhen I should be doing something else. A scrapof song, a pink scarf, and I’m back to curriesand pub food, long, wet walks without a map,bouts of bronchitis, a case of the flu,my halfhearted studies, and brooding thoughtsand scanning faces in every bar for you.Those months come down to moments or small plots,like the bum on the Tube, enraged that no one spoke,who raved and spat, the whole car thick with dread,only to ask, won’t someone tell a joke?and this mouse of a woman offered, What’s big and redand sits in the corner? A naughty bus.Not funny, I know. But neither’s the story of us. "
4 " I blame that little village in Spain,the one with the whitewashed housesin a crescent along the sea,a fleet of pastel fishing boats,and that celebrated coffee with brandy.A sour wedge of apple lurkedat the bottom like a tea-leaf fortune.Because we couldn't afford the fishwe ate pizza with peaches and oreganoon the beach, the sun and breeze conspiring.Seeing us there beneath the cliffsand the postcards of the cliffs,who wouldn't have predicted luck and beauty?Can I be blamed for loving it alland thinking it was you I loved? "
