the habit of being

A lovely and oh so meaningfully cryptic lyric about a charlatan and a harlot (or perhaps a harlequin named charlotte) would do for today, this week, this month. This month is crazy.

Made of swollen tonsils and stinging lips (yes, they actually throb), I am all a flurry of heat and unknowing. Thinking thinking thinking too much and worrying and my head hurts and my back hurts and I radiate but don’t work. There is excess fluid in my ears. (Can I still hear you? Did I never hear you at all? When things go right everything melts?) Pretty grey socks, soft. I remember a grey kitten that died within hours of its birth, it had a pink nose like mine and fur like my socks. (Schrodinger’s kitten? Inside out? I walked in from the cold this morning and everyone said “aww look at her nose,” and I said “I am sick.”)

Part of me has fallen in lust with an out of shape bald man, and what’s more- he’s short and he voted for George W. Bush. Yes, there are fantasies, and yes, it is sad. I can’t help it; he’s smarter than I am. (Don’t tell anyone ego turns me on. They might say I am sick.)

My right breast itches.

There are so many striking things about June, but lately the most isolated and poignant memory I have… we are playing Scrabble with my mother and little brother, but for some reason they have both left the room. We sit across from one another at the card table. You lean in and tell me I am beautiful. I say thank you.