In which I feel sorry for myself

I never really thought I'd be here. Here, this state of mind.

Here I am, though, pouring time through my fingers like sand. The dishes in the sink are sitting unwashed, and the paper I meant to write is untouched, and I am unrested.

Un un un. I am unwell, unwise. And for no reason--unreasonably--I am feeling unloved.

Neglect. Loneliness. I don't feel those things often, especially not these days. I remember being small, though, sitting in the corner of the storage room, snuffling by myself while my family finished eating dinner. It was cramped, in an almost-comforting but almost-stifling sort of way, and it was dark, and I thought maybe I would never come out and no one would care that I had gone. Maybe I would just stay there until someone came to find me--I'd stay overnight if need be, or for days, weeks. A month. A year. When the family was packing everything up to move again, they'd find me, still curled up, wrapped in this quilt like it was a kimono.

I need a quilt again. I need a small corner to stuff myself into. But really, I need a shoulder to cry on, and I need a reminder that it's all okay.

It's okay. It's okay.

It's okay. I'm okay.

(Maybe what I am really saying, have really been saying all these years, is: Please don't forget I exist.)

It's okay. It's going to be okay.

Time Runs Out

I've seen the days sneaking away in the twilight. They think I'm not looking, that I won't know they've gone, but I see them. They slink away like cats in parking lots. They swoop away like sparrows on a breeze. They dissolve. Silent.

I never counted the days or even the weeks, when they were all here. Now I can't say how many of them have escaped.

I sit inside, surrounded. The tasks are piled around me like Jenga blocks. I keep my eyes focused on the sector marked out by this one hour. When the hour passes and I am still alive and that one region is now clear, I am surprised to open my eyes to the mountain of to-dos in the area of the next hour. Occasionally I peek at the block-towers for the succeeding days. This is invariably an exercise in being overwhelmed.

Eventually my body reminds me: it is time to sleep. I gesture frantically at the things that ought to get done, in vain. I am carried, kicking and screaming, into rest. As the dream-key locks my eyelids shut, I see the tail of a day flicking as the day waltzes away, never to return.

Spring is capricious this year

Has it really been twenty days since I posted anything here? How sadly I have neglected thee, o my blog.

Spring came, and spring left, spring leapt away like a deer vanishing into the trees, irretrievable. Chasing after it does no good. Like a child crying at every inevitable loss, I cried when spring abandoned me to winter again, and I whined and whined about the rain.

But like the deer who returns at dusk to nibble delicately and destructively at your garden, spring has returned, again. Spring has come bounding in so many times, and then has gone bounding out just as many times... But I think spring is here to stay this time. I really hope so. (Spring, did you hear that? Don't leave me again, don't break my heart by only staying one day. You have my hopes up now: two days of sun, light, warmth, the promise of sweat.)

It's almost May and the tulip trees are blossoming. The dandelions are out, biting my bare feet. The grass is still a swamp from yesterday's thunderstorm, but it shone in the hot sun all day today. I have high hopes for tomorrow.