the habit of being

Two tall girl-things - the older one one perfectly lanky and chic, the other pegged a romantic on sight - sit on a bench together in a bookstore, after having exhausted the fun of trying to appear as lesbian lovers while surveying the women’s issues department. Arms linked, hips tilted toward one another - we have to stand like this, the slim one said. The long haired one would have liked to stand so close in any department and was a bit disturbed by the joke, but these chance intimacies cannot be passed up….. I imagine these young birds would look grand parading down the streets of Paris together, best friends, partners in their sensibility and silliness, whispering of hidden love affairs with the dark passersby. They’d dress simply and carry a fine umbrella. Some of the magazines piled in their laps now are French, so it makes perfect sense….. They flip through foreign fashion glossies much too quickly to pretend they could read them. They study the women in the pictures. The angular models, delicate features, roll through their heads, and yes, they feel quite ugly. Perhaps later, trying not to sleep, they’ll assure one another that they are pretty. ( Your eyes! Your legs! Your cheekbones! )….. Extremely revealing pictures are subjects of much amazement to the younger girl, she is not accustomed to Paris Vogue. The elder is not startled, being well-aware that people are simply more naked in Europe, and also having been through these magazines before. (The rumor is now she won’t touch a thing short of the New Yorker or Atlantic Monthly.)…… They are there together for some time, taking advantage of the hospitality given them by the multimillion dollar corporation singularly responsible for putting out of business thousands of charming independent bookshops of a type they themselves were born to appreciate…. Then suddenly, where to go? Oh! The CD department! All is great fun for the teenaged dramatists, all is fine, all is fair in heartbreak and disillusionment. (Our one life is Japanese pop music these days.)

. . .

talkaboutmyday:
I was worried about my mother’s being angry with me last night so I cleaned up my room. I clean when I am guilty. Stepped on a grape in the process. Then apologized for being awful by way of instant messenger, proposed a Scrabble game, was rejected. J. came online and we talked and I cried. Don’t know what to do in the face of her doubts. She went to sleep, I tried to read S&S with little luck. Turned out the lights at 5 in the morning, but was unable to sleep. Quite literally tossed and turned, couldn’t decide if I were hot or cold, thought about sleeping. Then thought about thinking about sleeping when trying to sleep. Had usual dirtytramp fantasies. Heard Ray’s coffee brewing. Somehow finally got to sleep. Was notified of its being 11:30 at some point. Got out of bed and took a shower at 12 something. Shaved again, am resolved to shave constantly as a replacement for being able to not eat. In shower for close to an hour. Forgot to turn on red light. Put on jeans and clean underwear from yesterdays laundry exploits, also GHP art minor t-shirt. Checked email, stats, guestbook. Went to work with wet hair as always. Resisted Lisa’s offers to get me food from Chick-fil-A. Developed six x-rays. Put patients in rooms. Weighed myself. 134. Ate random pieces of candy. Chewed 2 pieces of gum. Read about the queen mother, autism, and the g4 cube in Newsweek. Was annoyed by Sam and Sharon wanting to read something of mine. Got paid. Came home. Read a few chapters of S&S. Got online. Ate unhealthy supper, grapes, unhealthy dessert from Dairy Queen. Read about James and judo on AIM. Read Jenniferwriting. Took another shower. Started writing this. Ongoing saga, really, wouldn’t you say?

. . .

prelude to The Rape Scene (from part 3):

It happened late or early, one of those times in between. The mother was off touring the country in a van with the scene of Christ’s crucifixion painted on one side and an enormous pink octopus painted on the other. There was a connection somewhere, passed down the long line of philosophers and mystics who’d ridden in the pitted black interior over miles and miles of the great American countryside.

The driver called himself a pilgrim, and his voice was so clear some believed him. He could lecture about Plato, the politics of sex, and why eggplants were purple and it all seemed to make perfect sense. He was getting older and bonier every day, but none the less intense. Was he brilliant or mad or simply smoking the green dandelions from the south side of the field? No one knew or cared - he had cool wheels and fantastic ideas and no objections so making all the decisions. He was clearly no longer of this world.

“They say penguins know things about love,” the pilgrim told them one sultry afternoon.

(They being our beloved dharma queen, at this time in her thirties, the town prostitute, who’d once worked as a contortionist for a small circus in California, a man with a wooden leg who’d walked all the way from the Northwest Territory to the Gulf of Mexico is his younger years, and an average Joe who called himself Average Joe. )

“The males have to prove to the females that they will be taken care of during pregnancy before they’ll mate. The guys get all dressed up in those tuxes of theirs and bring fresh fishes and wild roses and such to their Sweet Sues. Or maybe the deal is that the male has to build the nest. But anyway, they’ve got it all figured out.”

Now no one knew if any of this was true or not, and judging from his history, the pilgrim didn’t know many things about love himself. The man had been married five times, in four different states. He’d even been divorced once too. It was bloody. That’s what got him started on his travels. All those courtrooms and lawyers had made him downright cynical and he’d wanted to get out and rediscover the land, to see the stars again, to meet interesting people and hear their stories.

Or maybe it was because he was wanted in three states for polygamy and his last wife had won everything he owned but that old van. (At the time it hadn’t been such a work of art.) Anyway, he’d gotten there, to that little Island off the coast of Georgia, and he’d rounded up all the free-spirits, gypsies, and outcasts and got them all psyched up for a roadtrip and the hope of a great epiphany.

The daughter, now fourteen, had been left in charge of the seashell shop. One morning was making the trip down the beach collecting shells - like her mother, in a beautiful white lace gown. Her hair was splashed about her shoulders like a Jackson Pollock painting in reds, oranges, and yellows. Her face was freckled by the sun, but in the darkness, she seemed seemed nothing but a pale pale ghost, or a princess from the moon.

Butterfly shells were her favorites. She’d always secretly wished she had an identical twin out there somewhere - someone who’d be the perfect friend for her, someone who’d understand everything. It was a particularly exquisite butterfly shell, as blue as the sky in July, she’d stooped over to claim when it happened.

. . .

I’m in horrible want of something surreal right now. I feel like trashing all former thought and restarting my Perspective, and it leaves me to wonder what the great trauma was, as I usually only feel this way after I’ve been through one layer of emotional hell or another. I want a white slate like hers, not so much narcissism, not so much decadent praise for silliness. Idealism gets dull at some point. I’m at that point. Someone should have told me fairy tales were stupid a long time ago. “Guess what, Katharine?! Vienna isn’t about ignorant little girls with typical dreams and nothing real to communicate, you sickening artificial lying self-absorbed vain phony shallow hideous child!” Ugh. Ugh, ugh, ugh. My life was never good enough to satisfy my ego

This vertigo consumes me, sucks my essence away, your mouth on my breast, yes I was dizzy then too. Too much to eat, too little, farther nourishment, farther inside. It’s all circling around in my head. Oh why can’t I vomit? I want to throw away all these impurities that keep me from seeing my thoughts as they float by. I feel sick now and it brings on ghosts of pleasure. The past. Why commit it all to the past so it fades faster and I begin to forget all intensity? It was all intensity, an unending circuit from you to me back to you back to me till it was impossible to tell where in its orbit the impulse situated itself. Impulse, circuit, it was electric, so electric. Touching hands like touching wires and I could have vomited then too from the jolt. Some strange flip of muscle - like when slowly tracing one nail down my torso I can’t help but spasm as the string meets that strange spot near the hip. Or is there some magnetic field around you - I enter and every cell wants to dance, twirl, around and around till the room spins and I can’t see your face for my eyelids are called down to calm me. Black icebergs, no, what do I see? A line that stretches before me, on and on?

I want to be smothered in the weight of you, my body blotted out my yours, come over, come over to my side, protect me from the air. Press me down against all that is mine and oh how I’d love you for the pressure. How I wanted something that spoke more of hunger. I was starving myself and I’d forget I had hands at all. These hands could be used for pulling but laid flat limp by my sides, not remembered in the haste to tell you so much in so little time, or lost in you hair from time to time. I told you you were a beautiful thing. It was the best I could do at the time.

Now it’s me alone wrapped up in the big blue towel, after a ten minute soak in the tub, just enough to get me immersed in thought, just enough to make me want to write. Just enough to ward off the thoughts of your being wanted by someone else. Could she give you more? No, she couldn’t. I’m the pearl, you said so.

My father told me today that he once dreamt of a pearl, some floating diamond-stars, a storm closing in from all sides. The pearl represented a woman and he had to protect her. Then he couldn’t get the image out of his head for years, YEARS. So he draws the simple illustration in his Christ-poetry manuscript. Says “I bet you didn’t know I could draw”, kneels on the floor to show me, says don’t read anything. Stupid poems, ten years, he can’t remember when his mother died. He looks wired, a quick quick shaking. Oh how he shook at her funeral. That made me cry so much more than her death itself. And I remember when he called my mother and told her, how she slid down the wall till seated in a doorway, crying. Oh Joe. I caressed her hair and went back to sleep. The next morning he came to tell me. No more Ginny. How? She shot herself. Why? He shook then too, oh how he shook. He didn’t know. I took the glass elephants down from the shelf in my room and turned them over in my hands. Clasp them hard, this is what the grieving granddaughter should do.

Your hands shook too. The first night? It terrified me so. Why? Did I ask why? Did you tell me? I wanted to clasp those hands to my chest till they were still, still like me. I am still through all the shock of it, though I feel as if the world is being tossed against a wall, everything I know streaming out into you. All that you feel I breathe in, till high from it, floating. I touch my hand to my face repeatedly, a pattern a pattern, to make sure I’m still there, I can still move my limbs. Never so calm, not in my entire existence had that happened so fully, and it was you, it was you. My skin on fire, yet I felt nothing. Could you tell I was a gypsy then? Is that what you mistook for enlightenment?

Me and Philip Glass. In my room, today, TODAY, not then. Alone. Koyaanisqatsi put me in a trance, they say I didn’t move an inch even after the credits were through rolling. And that was over a year ago now. Time always seems like something from long ago. That place is still clear t me, so it doesn’t seem right that time should have past at all. I see those people speeding through corridors in fast motion still, and the contrast of dunes, rocks. We all work together like clockwork, each a dot in ASCII artwork that stretches for miles. You told me sand dunes were sexy. I know it.

. . .

Green Jane’s on the bed with me, and an empty bag that once held dill pickle potato chips. There’s a pink ponytail holder in my hair, but it’s still falling in my face. I will not pose today. I will not bear witness to a camera. Bad skill. I haven’t painted in such a terribly long time. I haven’t even played my flute. Creativity atrophies, does it? Wind ensemble and two periods of art next year, I hope. Make me, make me, make me. Going to pick up my schedule on Monday between 9 and 11. I’ve been getting up in the afternoon lately, but today was different. I was anticipating something, I’m not sure what. Looked through some vintage Sarasvati, found things I’d vaguely forgotten. Somewhat like Jennifer with her old writing hidden under odd filenames to discover some other time. I used to do that very thing, but now I write nothing for myself and it is ever so disgusting.

. . .

something older (tell not show):

part 1. the mother

If she’d owned a clock, it would read 4:25 AM. It’s Tuesday morning and the mother’s eyelids flitter a bit; she’s sinking back into the present timespace - automatic, from months, years, and eternity of repetition. One eye (hazel) slits open, then its mate. The room takes s a second to come into focus. It’s pitch black, to the teeth, for miles. The wash of the waves massaging the shore pulls on her spine. She anticipates the day when the tide will come bursting through her door; the water damage would be a problem.

Half thoughts dart around her head as electrics. By now, she is aware that these are of the most important sort. Still, she throws back the single sheet and emerges from her cocoon, shaking off the sheath of restfulness and nightdreams. Elongating every muscle, the stretches each limb slowly, with calculated motion. It helps the circulation.

Fully in tune, she heads directly to the door - not a pause for to change into a day dress, not a sip of hot tea, she does not even bother to turn on the lights.

Out she runs into the salty wind and she is filled. An abrupt stop and she takes a breath, deep and heavy, that will reach each hidden spot. The sea splash is her heroin.

As she raises her arms in salute to Neptune or greater kings, her head tilts back and she gives her silent thank yous for the waves, the baby turtles, the hermit crabs that snap at her feet. She runs down to the water’s edge, spinning and spinning when the mood strikes her.

Until six, she can be seen walking along shore, white gown flapping behind, making origami with the wind. Our graceful old hippie, dharma queen of the beach, she contemplates seagulls and mutters. For years she’s molested her spirit, but doesn’t worry about enlightenment anymore. She worries for her daughter, far away and angry. She worries that she’s lost the piece of coral given to her by a prince she found hiding in a shell. Her list of causes is tucked away in her underwear drawer, and she simply does what she always has.

The mother has run a seashell shop on the Island for so long she’s seriously contemplating changing her name to Susie, she’s so damned tired of that rhyme (as if making Susie Sells Seashells by the Sea Shore real will make it go away.) It’s little annoyances like that one that all the meditation and yoga and astral travel and Zenification in the world can’t seem to cure in her. She may be able to see auras, survive on nothing but seaweed and imported coconut milk, to spot the good in nearly anyone, but she can’t seem to keep from grimacing when some tourist come in with a big grin on his face and asks is her name just happens to be Sue or Susie or Susan, depending on the flavor of his particular place of origin.

Everyone, mystical beach bums included, has a black ribbon tied somewhere, I suppose.

New days of less complication and I’ve been curled up with Jane Austen, lounging, going to my x-ray job, not missing Sewanee, anticipating J’s visit next week, and dreaming dreams that I remember. Certain distractions not the least of which may be symbolically erotic email pop up but I have no excuse for not writing in nearly two weeks. So I say to myself and also James on AIM “I should do something about my website” and I will. The easiest way would be to relate the various events I’ve lived through since my last sitting. Before I choose the route most taken I’ll point out that upon getting out of the shower I put my t-shirt on backwards and have no intention of correcting the error, since my plans for this particular day do not exceed flopping around in my bed and being generally sluglike and gross. I am extremely gross lately, I must confess. I’m eating disgusting foods and living in squalor and I don’t see a cure in sight. Pray for focus. Maybe J’s coming will help.

And so begins the telling of unhappy things:

Wearing all black, pleats, no bra, camera in hand, strapped down, can’t move, can’t smile. Dark room, after the banquet at which I said nothing, but that I didn’t much like vinaigrettes. Will sat across from me, he thought me brilliant though I don’t know why. Maybe because I’d replied when he asked us all why he told us the things he did that it was because we were listening. That seems not particularly brilliant but obvious. Will never talked to me either though. He ate lots of bread. My mom says bread is unhealthy. Sitting here like this is unhealthy, everyone is dancing, having fun, not caring. It’s the last night. There is the point when you can’t give in to the pleas of others to join in the entertainment whether you secretly want to or no. Believe me, I want to be making a fool of myself. But I slump farther and farther down into my chair, the silly disco music might as well be a funeral dirge. Even Kerry’s kind attempts to converse are rocks. And Kat comes over with her face close to mine making sad eyes at me begging me to save her a dance. And I tell her she has to stop. I do not tell her that if she does not stop I will kiss her, and not out of any affection for her, only a very sudden and sharp need to be kissing someone.

I walk out of the room, finally. Out into the darkness along one of those state-named roads of Sewanee, past tall stone buildings, perfectly manicured lawns, the chapel modeled partially after Chartres. Then emerge people in cars from the gloom and I am aware that the shirt I wear is quite tight. Maybe the strangers would kiss me. I try to move in a more sexy way, but all hopes are lost in melodrama, and I’m, to say the least, terribly bummed. I slouch against a column when I reach my dorm. Those who stayed away from the dance are there on the porch, smoking. They ask me a few questions. Was it lame? Yes, I tell them, it was lame. One of the straps of my shirt falls from my shoulder. I let it stay there, and try to be very very still. I am good at being still, calm like Sarasvati. I close my eyes. I consider following when they walk around back to get high. Instead I enter the building, trudge up the stairs to my floor, and sit in the shower, letting the water run over me until I’m content to get out and fall asleep in my bed in that empty room I’ve already packed. I slept hard that night, my last in Central Time.

I’m awakened at six by the phone’s ringing, and is it the pacified sound of my roommate’s mother’s voice I hear upon answering it. I’ve heard that voice before on numerous voicemail recordings. She obviously wants to speak to her daughter, but her daughter never sleeps in her room like she should, so I promise to seek her out. After much trouble in finding the right room (the name signs are by now taken down) I poke my head into K&C’s room and tell my fair fugitive to call home. Back upstairs, I sleep for a few more hours and then conclude my packing by stuffing my sheets in a bag. I do not have quite so much difficulty in getting my heavy suitcase down the stairs as could be expected. The lobby and porch are covered with luggage and people who are sad to be leaving. I am sad to not be sad to be leaving. Some people hug me. I wait. I’m one of the last to be picked up, though Sam arrived in Sewanee two days early.

The ride home is terribly long. I’m in the back seat with my twenty-something step-uncle, Chris, who is quite detestable and asks me questions about the colleges in which I’m interested. He thinks he’s smart and related to me. He is neither. I pretend to be asleep. We stop at a Waffle House and have vanilla cokes. Not that, or later the visit to the farm with peach ice cream, make up for the ride. Indescribably long. It stretched from 10 am to 9 pm with the stops, but eventually I did make it to my home and my nice big bed, which I’m now lounging about on. James slept in this bed not so long ago. He just sent me a message on AIM asking if I was still trying to write and I said yeah.

. . .

unfinished:
The flower finest of Joseph (the sea-spun aristocrat with such an odd nose and taste for his daughters) spent fifteen years blooming in a garden (mythical Martinque) with tea and the company of women, till she was seduced by an officer with shiny buttons, sweet tongue, clittering hands. Yes, she thought that he loved her, she did, and they were wed. Then he refused to present her to Marie, thinking her too rough, not up the the occasion of meeting a queen. From then on she shunned him in total, the bastard, and they say not one tear was shed from that unsophisticated eye when he was sent to the guillotine. Still, they locked her up, turned her in, and she barely whispered a complaint, turned her nose high to the scoundrels, till released in prelude to five old men.

*

Translated from the Incomprehensible by Katharine Tillman, this note reads “I love you, colder than inclination or provocation.” When I read it first, I sat up with a start, a sharp breath in, as if it made perfect sense. But now it is lost to me, as lines of poetry in my head sometimes are.

*

How odd it seemed that out of eight girls my age, I was the only one who’d ever taken nude photos of herself. When I was the only “I have,” someone asked if I sold them.

*

What things are worth writing poetry about? I think that most of those things call under the category of Too Untouchable for me to attempt writing about. And I say from time to time “I would never try to write that” and am shocked at my cowardice. Should I not try to write everything? Good practice for when I get better, and they all assure me I will, if I work at it. I like words that function as both nouns and verbs, they amaze me.

*

And I’ll be all “Jenny, you dirty tramp!” then I’ll jump in with something about how pretty your eyes are and you’ll go look in the mirror and be all “wowwww.”

. . .

So many so many so many words, from dragons and pearls to peacock feathers and porn. I wonder what all our words all these months have made, what we are, how far “us” spans. The things you write to me now have to business on a computer screen, and it seems unlikely that this medium could sustain us for very much longer. And you said I should write about coming to visit you in Austin for Christmas. I could do that, but at the moment it doesn’t seem right to write stories about us, projections. You’re saying all the things I’ve wanted you to say for two years, and I feel positively tongue-tied. How can I help but feel indebted? I often feel much more sorry for the things I haven’t said to you than the things I have. At times I’ll be on the verge of something grand, but the words just won’t come. I hope that you can know the whole of it without my having to articulate, but perhaps that is another illogical assumption.

What beautiful dreams we are.

The crumpled white linen of a school day’s playdress,
illuminated by sun from all angles,
still does not resemble lace,
silk, or otherwise.

In this paper light, I imagine myself richly attired,
blanketed, in delicacy. Each imaginary button is
singularly great, a masterwork, art. Stories
or fairly told vignettes painted by thin strands of
lace. The frock is a mild mild coral color, straight
down from below my clavicles to past my knees, it is
sheer.

The ribboned hat pinned to my head with its feather
bobbing up and down as I move, slink, though rooms ,
lit with warm tints. (Phosphenes I made by pressing
pressing on my eyes to block this sharp white on my
wrinkled nose. There are specks in the dark, tiny
pinholes, then colors that dance in and out of sight.)

Two sheer layers are still sheer in their addition,
the final sum does not escape translucence, a hint
of something under. Hip bone against membrane,
fibers so easy divorced by a slight tug. Perhaps he
misses my arm, lover who must be there, completing
the world behind my eyes.

The dress, more frail than I and more lucid,
dissolves, melts into a small stone on the floor.
Wavy haired children play games with it elsewhere,
somewhere far away from me in my fantasy, perhaps near
me in my reality, standing in the rough potato sack
near the slides with silver
too reflective in this
laser light show they call day.

In figures, I am nude now, my dress on the floor
as a marble. Fingers run for my chest, as could be
expected. These longer my fingers arch, my back
bends, my legs go on till tomorrow. But my breasts,
so far from perfect, hide them, I hide. Eyes,
eyes not mine now, eyes I love, eyes I despise
still looking at me, unrobed and cold in this
dream of a room stemmed from my aura
(violet for unrealistic focus).

Afraid, I reach for my hardened sheath slip,
I gently unroll it. Again she is a misty breeze, lace
doily in static wind. I’m off behind a screen.
So many layers of transparency between me
and the world. So many levels of knowing. Am I aware
like I say? Why do I hide?

Damselfly wings, blue veins of the wrist, or more
fabricated lace - what will I Baptize myself in? What
dream? What will I decorate my curves with, if not
paint only?

Violet, violet, where have you gone? Is that a veil
over your eyes, a coffee stain on your thigh? No,
you’re just flashed out by the sun. The glare is too
much, much too much.

. . .

I’m rather ashamed to relate the elation I felt when my mother told me I’d made a five on my AP US History exam.

. . .

She brings her summer lover in here, to my room, where she has not slept for days. Does she ask me if I will mind listening to their whispers, their breathing, the sounds that tongues make as I am trying to sleep? No, she just pretends I am not here, while I imagine what they must be doing over there, while I become more and more lonely. It’s dark. (Are they cowards like I am?) I don’t dare to move and have them think I have not drifted off to sleep hours ago. I hate them for lying so close together in that tiny twin bed. I hate them for everything I miss. In the morning I wake them at 8:30 and that bitch complains it was not early enough.

. . .

A concert, a concert. I’d forgotten how I love live music and seeing them all in their black dresses and tuxes. The arms of the conductor are so like those Indian women I want to mimic some day. I must get Marlon to teach me how to conduct, but he only does march style, and that’s not so great. It was lovely. I went with Melissa and Katherine after hearing our teacher read her story. The story was set in Marietta, where my mother grew up. On the way to Sewanee we stopped there and drove around for an hour or so, she pointing out all the houses she’d lived in and where her friends had lived, and the stable she worked at, and the Big Chicken, which is also the title of Kerry’s story.

The Sewanee Festival Orchestra. Robert Bernhardt, conductor. Lee Luvisi, guest pianist. Elgar’s Variations on an Original Theme (Enigma Variations) and Brahms’s Piano Concerto No. 2 in B-flat, op. 83. I’m buying the enigma variations as soon as I can. I was quite swept away. I longed for my flute. I fanned myself with the paper fan I was not to remove from the building. I gasped. I closed my eyes. I love the way violinists move.

We wandered around outside All Saints before returning to the dorm. We saw a snake. It was exciting. Then M. and I climbed stairs that went around and around (snake-like!) in a tower where it was rather dark and spooky. Up at the top we pretended to be bowmen guarding a castle, and talked of period frocks we’d like to own. M. is from New York City, and I think she is the best writer in my workshop. She writes of Egypt, though she’s never been.

The cold falls in sheets like the rain on our shoulders. The wet Birkenstocks under my toes are like sticky goo shoes with too much soul. Our hair is sopping wet in little snake strings. The mist sandblasts our pale faces, and I don’t really think it could be April. In my mind, it’s us versus a storm from the Arctic.

Nevermind the greyscale buildings. Nevermind the passersby with umbrellas, briefcases, newspapers tucked inside to keep them au courant in the capital. They must know all about the protesters and the cops, the streets blocked off, why her dad gave us places not to go. I don’t know. I’m practically a tourist, a fish. Still I belong, arm linked with this girl from nearby.

My hand in her pocket, hers in mine. We’re shiplike. Tempest tossed but giggling along. Wet and cold, we don’t really know where we go. Look for a museum, an art gallery, something static. We want to look and to be forbidden to touch. We want to gaze, halfway and hard.

All buildings are similar whites and greys, with lines, with squares, heavy things. They are broken up online by startling pictures of skinny girls (whores? princesses?) up high and smiling, or the next huge incarnation of Absolut vodka. Is it Absolute hunger? Absolut lust? Absolut indecision? Absolut silence in the murky city air.

We pass back and forth my dripping Bear Bryant hat, though it won’t do much good for us yet. She says she sobs on that hat now, and I am far away, in the heat, head in the oven on a pillow. It’s not my only soaked-hat story these days.

Are we not still fabric sisters, in the drizzle or icicle queen tears? The purple air? I think I can still smell your hair, in my scarf.

We step into a church with colored windows and drip on the floor. From the foyer, we watch the goings-on inside. Hiding there, that holy hallway, we can’t enter, we’re trapped. How could we dare?

. . .

I’m wearing my new green Sewanee Tigers t-shirt. I had a calzone with spinach for lunch, bagel for breakfast. Jennifer is coming to visit me on the 30th. My fingernails are long. This entry is short. I’m sorry.