The Single Glove.

{Contains: rape, trauma, and hopefully instructions on how to deal with both}

...............

Maybe it was because the friend who gifted me the glove (I mean: the gloves, because they always come in pairs) meant so much to me. 

And maybe also because her own life has become so unfairly mangled recently; sliced and disfigured by the flying shrapnel of yet another immolating man, and so she is my sister in survival. 

And so the gift of a pair of gloves from her means something more than just a gift of a pair of gloves, as we continue to burn ourselves into new shapes, me and her, phoenix-ing impossibly in these dark, frozen conditions. 

And maybe it was because I heard several random people, all in this past week, remarking how proud they were to have not lost a pair of gloves in years. And maybe I’m just jealous. 

But when I realized that one half of my new favorite pair of gloves

(Given to me but three weeks ago)

was not in the car with its mate 

I despaired.

I am still a glove-loser after all these years. 

…………

Your mind can be stolen from within.

Your intimate, personal memories, your version of your own childhood, your trips to the grocery store; they can become occupied like a set of villages, like an occupied territory in a long war.

…………

And though I was meant to drive into the city to deal with an endless list of tasks, 

though I was late,

I turned the car back to the suburbs to retrace the entire morning’s steps.

To the post office where I’d mailed my tip to the newspaper delivery man (no glove)

To the corner at the depot, where I helped Kate unload her suitcase that morning (no glove)

All the way back to the driveway of the house, where we’d left in haste (no glove)

And into the kitchen (no glove, no way: I knew no single glove would dwell in the kitchen. I knew I had them both in the goddamn car. I never would have brought one glove to the car.)

I doubled down.

spent the entire morning looking for the orphan glove. And the piano didn’t get touched.  And the emails didn’t get answered.  And the tour didn’t get promoted.  

And with each passing fifteen minutes that I did not find my fucking glove, I fell deeper into the funk; the old familiar arms of disorganized failure. 

But still, I persisted. 

And retraced again

And again. 

And finally 

I found the glove, 

patient, orphaned, silent 

lying in the snow, under the arching bough of the huge pine that grows over the shortcut to the post office; the shortcut I’ve been walking since I was six or seven years old. 

…………

Ten hours later, in the street-light of the almost-solstice night, on my way home, alone, after a long days work

I drove past the spot where I’d found the orphaned glove, 

and I found myself thinking:

Oh my god…

a good memory.

Like a soft fluorescent moss slowly growing over a barren jagged rock

For too many years now, as I have driven down familiar roads, 

over thousands of miles of errands and school runs, I have seen only relentlessly black reminders of living nightmares, 

the gabled windows of the neighbors who lied to me,
the pond where I swam with the woman who stole from me,
the parking lots where I wasn’t protected from abuse,
the snow-covered lawns reaching out of dark bedrooms where I was raped.

The grocery stores I have actively had to avoid as an adult, so as not to run into people caught up in their own addictions, their own immolations.

I have driven away, moved away, so many times, only to be trailed by a stain that seems to follow me down every road.

It can feel impossible to escape, when you’re so close to someone's immolation.

The closer you get, when trying to help an exploding soul, the more the shrapnel slices your own face and leaves you bleeding.

Sometimes you just have to get out of the blast zone.

Trauma, addiction, and lies: that doomed trifecta of streams that merge to become a stoppable river that can flood the town of your memory.

A hostile takeover, a bottomless bottle of wine sloshed on a white paper map on the family dinner table,

covering every highway, every road, every path, every driveway, every memory.

A dark red flood that permanently stains.

…………

But,

my love,

it does not have to be permanent.

You'll search,

you'll search,

you'll find yourself,

patient, orphaned, silent.

…………

And

today, in the town where I live

In that exact spot under the pine tree next to the post office  

I became a person who took the time to look for

- and who finally found -

a single, beautiful glove. 

I became a person who took the time to look for

- and who finally found -

a single, beautiful memory. 

..................

Thanks to M., Kate, and Geraldine.

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Comments are open.

Wish me luck in the studio today, I've got a huge project.

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UPCOMING SHOWS:

DEC 19th, 2025 - Norwood, MA - THE MAGIC ROOM - Tickets
JAN 6TH, 2026 - Waiheke, NZ - ARTWORKS THEATRE - Tickets
JAN 11th, 2026 - Sydney, AUS - CAMELOT - Tickets
JAN 18th, 2026 - Melbourne, AUS - BRUNSWICK BALLROOM - Tickets

Art by Niki McQueen.