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