There is a raccoon stuck bottom-half inside a tree, I see it when I walk from the bus-stop. There is a man on a blue ladder, his arm up to his elbow in the hole, trying to shove the squirming creature free from the other side. I want to walk up to the situation and reach up and grab onto the creature, ignore the claws and teeth that would tear at me and pull. Yank it free in one smooth movement. Instead I run my tongue over the inside of my teeth, ossified pearls, and walk away. I will be late if I do not go now. I am obscurely disappointed my skin will remain intact.
I’ve been sleeping heavily lately, as if everything shuts down, as if my soul goes absent. I’m not used to it. Every morning is a dim entrance, a watery sky debut into a film I never needed to see. It’s like there’s a blanket of dust over me in my dreams. I twitch, I can feel it, just on the edge outside of consciousness. My body is trying to cope and maybe not doing as well as it used to. There’s something in my head getting in the way. It’s like when I lie in bed, when it’s time to dream, my mind seizes the chance to escape me, drive fast and away, disassociate from the crashing tide of conflicting shades of ache that run underneath my point of view, instead of resting, instead of taking the space to relax and fix my scrapes and bruises. It’s tiring me out, not being in my body. I have to find someone who knows how to connect the bits and pieces. I have hopes for Saturday.
Today the radio plays songs I used to listen to last year. It’s like nostalgia without the immediacy of caring about what happened. My in-box tells me letters from people who used to be my lovers. Someone drops the word muse on me and I smile, warmed by a rare spark of feeling worthwhile. If they weren’t so far away, that’s exactly what I want to be. The weather here never changes. Overcast with a chance of sun, sunny with a chance of rain. Always water from the sky. Even when it is blue it looks gray. I haven’t taken part in creating in a long time, too long for me.