i imagine my life alone
i wake up, stretch, a bun curled in sheets, wrapped in what? silk, i'd say, but a lie
satin is 'sexy,' like tom ford tobacco vanille, chenin blanc and flowers, like a poem by someone else
no. i love cotton, soft, with stripes or whimsical ornaments or blue stripes
tis the season and like little twinkling lights, i am finally my own light in the windows of houses i used to drive by

anyways, i wake up alone.  it is quiet.  i do not have a dog, still.  i will.  but for now, no
ask alexa what time it is, go to the kitchen and make espresso, froth milk, stir, pour.
and like people go broke, gradually and then all at once, i am on the couch, cup in hand
staring into space, writing in my gratitude journal, reading a poem, thinking about writing, thinking

no one is coming, everything is quiet, and i am happy.  

i love thinking about this.  i have a day to myself, all by myself at home, and i am not scared.  i loved living alone, though i was still a baby then, it seems in retrospect.  i appreciate it more now, and i like it.  everything is just where i leave it.  i open the blinds, i close them.  

sitting on the floor organizing my books.  nothing makes me feel like myself
but these things do, including but not limited to:  long drives in the car, plucking a book from the shelf, seeing a line i underlined ten years, a dog eared page of margaret atwood, the books of poetry from people before you.  before you.  i have never been a half or need to be made whole, and i never understood this.  

i rarely remember my dreams; i had a dream we were divorcing after both siblings broke up with their significant others, it is not hard to see the connection. you will be fine, she tells me, you will be just fine.  sometimes i zone out in therapy but i am listening: you are still an attorney, even if you don't want to work, in a w2 way, you know what i mean, work outside the home.  maybe you never go back to work.  i hang on every word here, especially, the casual way she says maybe, never.  but you are still these things, you are trained as an attorney, you are multilingual, these these do not leave you.  (i do not worry and yet).   if you got divorced -- which you're not, you are happy!  you talk to each other!  you have asked the questions you need to ask, and if i know you, you probably asked more than once (laughing feeling both seen and perceived, i say yes) -- but i would not worry about you.  you would end up on your feet.  these are the facts, she seems to say.  you would end up on your feet -- she says this with warmth but also a clinical certainty.  i do always seem to, i say.  what feels unsaid is that we both know i know how to go on.  to keep on keeping on.  to be resilient.  to whatever it all means, there is something we both know, even if she sees it more than i do some times.  i will sit down and do the work, i will make a list. we get extra life insurance and i try not to feel like a cliche in a crime novel. i do not want a life without you but we plan like the show must go on.

while i love the lyrics of sweet nothings: "and the voices that implore, "you should be doing more," to you i can admit that i'm just too soft for all of it."  (and you are in the kitchen humming.  but this one is not about you and our love story.)  i live in reality.  i ask for the passwords, because what if.  death is not beyond any of us, with spectacular clarity.  my mom tells me, today on the phone, that when i was little my dad used to tell me he probably wouldn't live to see me grow up and this is a piece of my childhood that slides stunningly into place!  i cannot believe i do not remember it; i believe it because he did almost die a few times.  so: death comes for us all.  we are all just shooting through the universe on a floating rock (this is about the time you say, let's take you for a walk, and i go for a walk and then i feel better). i simply no longer aspire to labor and i know exactly how that sounds.  foreign, entitled.  what was the point of it all, then.  again, you're not supposed to say it out loud, but i know it too is true, for now.  it takes so much work to relax.  i am working on it.  do you see all the labor in these words?  i make a playlist and call it serotonin.  i still prefer my sad songs, longing and despair, even though i actually don't believe 'nothing is as strong as a memory.'  halloween by novo amor, phoebe bridgers on repeat.  i found an old playlist and added it to my old jams.  music is always the straightest line. i read articles about interest rates, inflation, intersectional feminism. i attend lectures 'for fun,' i research articles about psychology, i check the cites and the statistics in nutrition studies. casually i learn an entire new language of pokemon and go on walks with friends. i literally love going to school even in a video game.  i review software engineering pay grades, i watch tiktoks about HR and compliance and adhd and fashion, disconnected from any need to monetize any of it all.  i help a friend pick health insurance.  i think about needlepoint, then i buy all the presents.  you don't have to find all your hobbies now, she says.  if i'm going to take a break, of course i want to optimize it.  yes of course i know i am not perfect, but i also am not supposed to make mistakes. how can i take the best break.  it is so fucking exhausting, honestly. i release all of this shit, right here. i am still me.

i am sitting on the floor looking at my hall of fame books.  i feel marie kondo in my bones, this must be what joy really feels like.  this, driving in the car, long walks in winter, all my favorite songs played in headphones.  i still love an empty shelf.  a secret space.  notes in the margin.  concert tickets tucked into books.  i am so exactly the same, yet i can't believe i am thirty six.  i am so happy to be older, to feel as i am, neither too old nor too young, not naive but not jaded either.  'as i am.'

earlier this year i broke my ankle, and my reserve (of fucks? probably that too). i snapped some tendons, and it was the last straw.  i was supposed to be free, finally, after two years of pain, and here we go again.  it was my health or work.  we had two trips planned, so i meant to take a month off to hopefully be able to travel, but not knowing if they'd let me fly, and give myself some time to be able to go see the orthopedic surgeons, the physical therapist three times a week, the pharmacies, all these appointments all the time, criss crossing the dc borders and sitting in offices wearing my masks, trying not to cry.  crying.  wings clipped. again. the accumulation of things i did not want.  a boot, a cane, a wheelchair.  i fucking hate it here.  i just can't go on like this:    

"This exercise surprises you into realizing the difference between factual truth and psychological truth."  (From the Practice of Poetry.) i love italics, the slant and curve. "Little green apples, the most allusive."  everything felt elusive, unimaginable, a thick fog. sometimes i do miss writing essays analyzing essays. what would i say? when you can't see your own blind spots, you ask brutal questions.  you ask brutal questions.

sometimes i can't remember where i bought books. but
in stunning clarity i search for the page about water in anne carson's beauty of the husband.  so abstract. always quoting keats.  she reminds me of me in the right light, in another life.  copyright 2001.  finally i am grateful for clumsy math.

'was your heart rearranged? ... for a walk through an ocean town.' maine by noah kahan is playing.  my hair is washed, shiny.  i have always had great hair.  you're not supposed to say it, but i know it is true.  he is not photogenic, my mother says, but not about you. he always looks different, i say.  i look the same, i say, and she agrees.  have you read margaret atwood's poem about mirrors, pools?  all of that.  i am wearing a cashmere sweater, sitting at my desk, music playing, fingers click clacking on the keys. listening, then thinking about all the other senses: i should get a new perfume. cashmere sweaters, diamonds, chinoiserie. my antique lamp. my modern art. my my my my. is it joy, is it  trappings, or a trap.

we walk in a crate and barrel to look at glassware.  i go to the deli where i was a regular and order my old sandwich.  it is still so crisp and delicious.  it is sunny and i dreamt of this.  i don't know if i could see this then.  i forgive myself for being so hard on myself when i was trying so hard.  i forgive myself like a prayer, over and over.

the grandparents can't travel to maine anymore.
outside this window is a great fir tree-- fir, i think.  it sways in the wind, i look up at it like a sun, seeing its branches moving reminds me i am alive.  the sky darkens.  it finally feels like winter.  i am not scared.  my legs are crossed and i feel self assured under them.  i am not a deer trying to find its footing, though i can relate. (remember how you wrote about deers not being able to tell time.  i still think about it every new year.) i love how other people talk about sex so openly, even in poetry.  sharon olds poem about ice skating.  "not the truth, which is the single body alone in the universe against its own best time."  you don't just stop being raised catholic when you don't go to church anymore. (words that come tumbling: "i know the game" and i know a scam from a game.) i am comfortable in my body.  i invest my money.  i vote, i read the news when i am not depressed, i am pissed at roe v. wade.  i am still me, i am tempted to say.  i don't ignore things.  i believe her when she says i will be fine. i think i believe her.

i am listening to music and it is distracting, but i am really fucking happy.  it's a start.  

i don't know.  i am happier than i know i sound.  i like the trappings of life; the tools that make my life joyful.  tan leather seats.  tortoiseshell.  cut crystal.  pens. an elegant black wick trimmer (can you believe i just used to burn candles, without a single care, i find myself thinking).  little stacks of books next to me, clamoring to remember, where did i underline, what page did i dog ear, do i remember.  what do i remember.

listening to maya hawke, who is an actor to her and a singer to me.  
her songs - sweet tooth. i don't want to edit this.  i want to live life like i am alone- text more friends, make other plans, go to a museum on a weekday, meet up for coffees. and yet, today i am free to do anything i want, drive anywhere, take the metro anywhere, make a flight and just go:  and i come home, i sit in front of my newly made bookshelf, the power spot, the sparker of joy; i selected volumes.  i covered the others so i wouldn't reach in and put them back.  if ever a metaphor.  i picked out books, my favorite ones. and i sat down to write.  this is how i feel free.

i sat down to write, so many times, while i felt warm, buzzing, happy.
i don't want to forget that.

sometimes, it's poetry.  
some times it's just practice.

(and like atwood quoting keats -- but now who is it, shakespeare or ee cummings?  that life is not a dress rehearsal, and death is not an apology.  something something something.)

and yet, this end does not feel fitting.  this is not practice.
(even when i have a headache, when clutter is overwhelming, when it's pitch black so of course i am sad, when i'm annoyed, when my stomach hurts)

and then iron & wine comes on, 'i just want to see you in the morning.'  
yes, this. 'you're in the kitchen humming' from sweet nothings. give me some serotonin.  enough of the sad songs.  
(i got rid of all my family law books about divorce.  i can not ignore things and also not keep what feels like a weird omen, talisman.  i highlight these sentences a few times, the can/not feels out of place, thinking of future me, mining this.  it's enough, no edits. just like we tell the dog, leave it.)

this is what i want to sharpen with clarity:
making each other laugh so hard.  you -are- in the kitchen humming.  dishtowel over one shoulder.  yep.  as much as i love being alone.  i just want to see you in the morning.  


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