knees

palms to the wall 

blacking out in the bed 

I'm glad to know: there's hunger in me yet 

A pack of dogs

 

How quickly I move in and out of limerence 

I don't want to dye my hair pink but I do want to live in a world where people can, and they can still be taken seriously 

Five and a half miles around the circumference of the lake 

At the teach-in 

At the slide of silver linings 

At the time for your efforts is now, and also then, but certainly 

now 

Every new thing I learn about my country's maneuverings abroad is more horrifying than the last horrifying thing that I learned 

Perhaps we deserve our suffering

Similarly, those eighteen months: a progression of horrors 

I am ashamed to tell you how horrible it was 

For their part, my siblings continue not to do their part 

For the claim that he was making art, I have fired my therapist 

I get massages instead, teasing out all the emotions I've stashed in my shoulders, tucked into my hips, stuffed deep in the center of my left calf

After the hike I eat a large salad with chicken 

I stretch

I watch a comedy show 

For 21 minutes I remember how to laugh 

Gag

 

Of course, I overdid it 

Prickling my flesh 

I rip the hoodie off 

My favorite part of today was when she wanted to help me garden 

This week I am struggling to feel happy even when I'm with people whose company I typically very much enjoy. A lot of the time I'm faking a good time. So far one person has called me out on this. I'm grateful for it. 

Another one of those spiral epiphanies: I am afraid that other people will find me too much 

I'm textbook

Gag me with a spoon 

Fantasizing in the bathtub 

Early years with the faucet 

Most especially I don't want them to know the litany of traumas 

Who wouldn't be repelled by someone as broken as me 

Some people are saying 

Child, remember to breathe 

Housemade soups are back

I think it's time to admit that I'm unlikely to develop the hobby of crocheting my own clothes 

Frankly I just like knitting scarves, and then only rarely 

Treat yourself to tallow! 

I will try to remain resolute about the fact that anything can happen 

He can't figure me out 

Past the kumquats, she read it on a sign 

Just change two letters

Stop faking 

Stay focused on what you want for your own life 

Red

 

At the membership desk a decorous woman replaced my Dad's name with my own 

We walked the brown meadow until my mother got hungry 

We walked through one glass building and then another 

I told her what the dots were for

I forget sometimes how little she believes me 

One of the bonsai is approximately 800 years old 

We walked to the lake but the water was gone 

What is the eye without water

We are little but flesh and bone 

tired

 

I work for a few hours, then head to the garden 

On the way there a man leers at me from a van at a stoplight  

I glare into him and he doesn't stop

They are emboldened

Fifteen years ago on the streets of happy valley: so skinny and weak, and all the young men leering 

I have not missed being prey

At the garden I chop and rake and bend and scoop 

I drive to the natural food store and buy kale, yogurt, coconut milk, bok choi 

When I pull into the driveway I'm too tired to get out of the car 

Maybe I will stay here, in the front seat of the Subaru parked in the driveway 

I have food to last for days: kale, yogurt, coconut milk, bok choi, a glass jar of concord grape juice 

I'll warm myself by the bags of decomposing leaves and garden clippings on the back seat 

My toe hurts

 

It is shades of blue and yellow and purple and it hurts to bend it 

It hurts to walk

You won't see me limping 

Turn me on again

 

I wish I hadn't stopped making music 

I'm not sure anybody knows that one of my favorite colors is camel. which is a pretty silly name for a color 

The person I most want to fuck right now is Chappell Roan's drummer 

I'm sorry if I'm being problematic 

I feel like I'm not allowed to say that I was partly living out of a car and sleeping on my friends' couch ten years ago, with less than $340 to my name after I spent my life savings ($3,500 earned over nine years of working) on a Subaru Forester. But the truth of the matter is that I was partly living out of a car and sleeping on my friends' couch ten years ago, with less than $340 to my name. And nowhere else to go. 

Now I am lying in a Queen-size bed that I bought for myself in a house that I bought entirely by myself. Then I was making more money than I ever thought possible and now I am making less money on purpose, because I am trying to do more of something meaningful. And in the center of all of that money, and the lack of it, the having more and the having less, is me, a person, who has a name. 

I have been fortunate, and I have also been effortful  

I have efforted 

Here I am another layer into the spiral 

Learning again, not surprising and also epiphanic, the same lesson and also different, deeper: If you aren't able to be yourself with people, no matter how many you surround yourself with, you're still alone 

Casual

 

Here's the thing 

If I open, the longing comes back 

 

I work all morning then take the dog for a walk

For several minutes we watch the roofers 

I work all afternoon then lift weights in the back room upstairs 

I take a shower

I take the dog to her agility class 

I drive home with the windows down

I get lost in the dark in a corporate complex 

Back at home, I rub coconut oil into my scalp. My hair is instantly oily 

I watch another 40 minutes of insights for restoring the canopied landscape

I eat samosas and riced cauliflower to quiet the yearning

I had suppressed how much I wanted somebody to want to see 

 

You get to a certain point and you realize you made some mistakes 

In my case I suppressed awakeness for accomplishment, intimacy for the fear of being alone 

I understand why my Dad started playing the drums

Mid-November

 

Finally, I can feel winter approaching 

For the first day this season the bird bath sits empty 

The branches, most of them, are bare

The leaves that remain dangling are crinkled and brown 

The sky is gray

I go outside in a hoodie and a thick fleece, and I'm still cold 

When we walk beside the river, Suzie skips most of her favorite swimming spots 

Then we come upon her friend Sage, and together the dogs run headlong into the water 

Sunday after Tuesday

We sat in the church and he cried

They said they'd stand with us, but I couldn't believe it 

Even my friends abandoned me 

The minister says there's a little hope fledgling at the bottom of the box, ready to take flight

He is well-intentioned

The minister's assistant cites Dante's Inferno

She says she doesn't have much hope

The forest is dark, and the leaves keep falling 

She'll try to do good anyway 

Mount Climbness

 

We leapt from one rock island to another

One of us fell down but soon she was climbing again 

We walked the secret pathway 

We drew on big rocks with smaller rocks, purple and gray and gold 

We looked for a red rock but we did not find one

We found leaves as big as their heads

That was really funny 

We wrote our names with sticks in the dirt

We drew dirt mountains and volcanoes 

We tested different materials by tapping them with a stick. Wood, wood, wood... 

Finally, I remembered to dance

I am thinking about buying the winterberry

 

Of course there are a lot of factors to consider. For starters, you'd need to make room. You'd need to relocate the blueberries, which you've already planted in the bed where you envision the winterberry taking root. Where would they go? It's possible they'd survive on the hillside in the backyard, though you don't have a hose hooked up back there. Be honest: Would you really water them? Then again, given their propensity for dry soils, would you need to? You were excited about the blueberries when you planted them, and now you're feeling excited, albeit more so, about the winterberry. Before we dismiss this as a case of greener pastures, however, let's consider that you are refining your preferences every day. It's possible the vision you have for your garden these days is different than the vision you once had. You have evolved and you have a keener eye for garden design now than you did then. There's validity to your instinct: The verticality and the parallelism of the winterberry might in fact align better with the bed's shape and location as well as the azalea in the middle of it. The blueberries are useful, and tasty surely, but perhaps a bit squat. It's possible they might not grow large enough to provide everything you need or were looking for when you decided to bring new shrubs into your life. Of course, it's difficult to determine, when weighing the pros and cons of blueberries versus winterberries, whether or not the bush that's already growing in your homestead is superior to the shrub that has enticed you but has not yet proven itself a viable partner to your garden's soil, location, and goals. 

taking my mother out to dinner

 

It was difficult to find parking 

The line is too long 

There are two separate lines and it's confusing

The wait will be nearly an hour

No, I don't want to go anywhere else

The restaurant is too loud

It seems like every restaurant is too loud these days 

It's hard to find a table 

I think we have to go upstairs

Crap, it's crowded here too 

They were out of my first choice

I really wanted that reuben 

I guess I'll get the falafel, my third choice 

I don't even know what this drink is 

The room is too cold 

I don't know why my friend won't get her hearing checked 

If the food isn't ready soon my body will decide it's no longer hungry

No, if I eat anyway, I'll pay for it 

I'm hosting my friends next weekend but I wish I hadn't said yes 

They'll be here the same day that I have to pack for my trip 

You'll be here for Christmas, right? 

The room is still too cold 

I wish I had time to have a mental breakdown

 

Alas the emails need written

Alas the leaves are piling up against the brick porch 

The car's tires are deflating 

The meeting is at 10:45

You must prove yourself 

The carex needs to be planted

I wish for a time when I could wear black continuously and sit contemplating in a hay field, and everyone would understand