Threadbare, by Diane Durant

Gregory Crewdson Untitled, 2007 Digital pigment print © Gregory Crewdson. Courtesy Gagosian.

Threadbare

There wasn’t much else to say, except that she needed some time to herself. A minute, an hour, a day, indefinitely. Fog emanating from the weathered singlewide hovered in the air like a ghost, like a whisper. Don’t leave me, it would say, in a breath, just before twilight turned to darkness, to that warm summer stillness that wraps you up like your grandfather’s old overcoat, two sizes too big and holey. 
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My grandfather wore faded blue coveralls, patched everywhere but the knees, and work boots covered in grease even after he stopped remembering where he was or what he was doing or where he was supposed to be going. He would stand alone in the yard, hands perched high on his waist, and stare out into a cow pasture long without cows, wondering, I imagine, why everyone had left him.

She left the light on, waiting for you to come back home—physically, of course, but more so emotionally—hoping that home amounted to more than a four letter word or a four sided building, that it outweighed all the reasons you gave yourself for wanting to be alone, just beyond her reach, sitting stagnant in another untitled moment, between the hush of trees and a broken heart, between the slow sounds of threadbare tires backing down a caliche driveway and desire.

Diane Durant

Diane Durant works with image, text, and found objects to tell true stories, from paddling rivers and road trips to all the everyday stops in between. She is a graduate of Baylor University, Dallas Theological Seminary, and the University of Texas at Dallas where she currently serves as Associate Professor of Instruction and Director of the Comer Collection of Photography. She serves on the university's Committee for the Support of Diversity and Equity as well as the Social Justice Advisory Board for the WNBA's Dallas Wings organization. Diane is the former president of 500X Gallery in Dallas and past editor of The Grassburr, The Rope, Sojourn, and Reunion: The Dallas Review. Her poems have appeared in di-verse-city, riverSedge, Borderlands: Texas Poetry Review, Stymie, the Texas Poetry Calendar, and The Spectacle. Her photographs have been exhibited widely and belong to the permanent collection of the National Park Service. Diane is a member of the Board of Directors for the Cedars Union, a non-profit arts incubator in North Texas, the LGBTQ Caucus Leadership Team of the Society for Photographic Education, and Chair of SPE’s South Central chapter. Her first monograph, Stories, 1986–88, was released by Daylight Books in January.