028: sink.

Every day someone calls at work, confused about X, desperate for Y, angry over Z. And when I can’t help them I sink. Clutch the phone, listen to them howl. Wait for the water to slip over my head.

My favorite bracelet means nothing—I braided the leather myself, on a whim, out of boredom—but I ache when I lose it. Now the snap is loose and it keeps falling off my wrist. Every so often someone taps me on the shoulder: “I think you dropped this.” Or a week later Mum finds it, dampened, in the unfolded laundry.

027: evening.

You know, the earth comes alive when it rains.

Life doesn’t disappear. It revives, runs out to dance.

So I flick off the lamp and write by dusk.

It’s darkening, but do I care?

I wish time meant nothing.

I could drift from strength to weakness

without guilt.

I’m afraid of these woods—because they are dense? because they are imperfect?

Those old woods overgrew long ago.

No more of those paths our feet made.

I still think of the horses,

the cobwebbed shelters,

the pond on top of the hill,

the lily of the valley everywhere,

and feel small.

026: how to fall out of love, on purpose (because you have to) (because life)

1. breathe.

2. look at the sky. a lot.

3. learn astronomy. constellations. get lost up there.

4. lie flat in the grass. nose to nose with ants. study their lives.

5. drink tea, which is better enjoyed alone.

6. put on clean socks.

7. say, “no. no, no, no.”

8. scream.

9. go on a wilderness adventure.

10. read poems.

11. take a long, hot shower.

12. eat soup.

13. draw on your hands.

14. listen to the black keys.

15. hang laundry outside.

16. laugh.

17. make art from newspaper clippings.

18. cut your hair.

19. dance. passionately. in the kitchen.

20. blow bubbles over water.

21. run barefoot in the dark night.

22. catch one firefly.

23. forget their name.

025: swept me away

I’m addicted to cafés—I’ll go to multiple in one day—but I always feel strange when I arrive and in less than an hour I’m gone.

Driving in misting rain,

sitting on rocks under a willow, branches dipped in water,

postcards from London in 1926,

Main Street sidewalks deserted and mine,

music I can fall asleep beside—

these things I can survive on

for a while.

take the strangeness away.

I heard this, remembered steps from a dance I choreographed on the rainy days—must have been three summers ago.

I will never comprehend the world’s aversion to rain.

024: summer, I guess

(Don’t trust that I’m back, like, permanently.)

(Mostly I just want to write something.)

It’s summer. 

I’m working rather a lot. 

I like it. 

Sometimes it’s flusteringly mad. Sometimes it’s...not.

Only complaint: 

I spend all day promoting wine and viticulture, 

and I’m just barely too young 

to experience it myself.

In spare time I read Victorian tomes (currently Bleak House), 

drink coffee, 

explore the woods, 

run with Dad, 

write poems that don’t make sense.

It’s easy to fall into summer swimmingness and forget 

how much I miss Gordon, 

my friends, 

my favorite places.

But where I am is good.