This morning the sky is white.  Everything else looks gray: the roofs of the houses, the branches above them, the small birds and the big birds and the birds in between.  Today it will rain.  Tomorrow it will snow. How many grays will that be?

 March.  

There is a staleness in the air, like sawdust on a market floor.  It feels like walking in mudflats.  The weight of the year, the dishes in the sink, the unopened mail on the kitchen table.  

This morning I ate leftover mac and cheese with green hot sauce.  I am not sorry.

 Friday morning.  The heat is hissing behind me. 

Yesterday I heard a mourning dove. This morning nothing.

Wednesday morning.  I am not sure what day of this we are on, but it feels normal now, this slow waking, slow moving, slow starting each day.  It is the second or third sunny day in a row. A child is playing the trumpet upstairs. The cat is in the window.  Today I am trying to resist putting my houseplants out. It is too early. The front steps need painting. There is room for growth.

Going back.

I am getting used to the days.  Walking the halls I feel like some sort of spectator, like I am there to collect information on what exactly it means.  I feel my difference. The students don't look at me, don't look up, but the professors nod their heads, make eye contact, say hello.

I am finding places to exist.  The end of the hall only computer science students go down, with its bench in front of the heater, the sunlight shining through the dirty window.  Yesterday I sat there and ate my lunch.  I could see out the window three cops trying to help a driver get his car out of an icy parking spot.  I watched them push the car, kick the snow and ice, try to ease it out of its spot. They took turns directing traffic around their double-parked cars, lights flashing.  I would have yelled my advice if the window opened.  I just watched.  After ten minutes one of the cops found a piece of cardboard and slipped it beneath the tire. The car lurched free, then one cop stopped traffic to let the driver out.  They stayed there for a couple minutes, arms crossed, kicking the icy spot.

When the visiting nurse calls I tell her I am no longer part of the patient's care.  She is on her way, she says, to draw blood, and the other number goes to a message.  This is not her house, I say, even though it is on file as a number.  I will make sure they change it, she says. Wait, I say.  Please. Please don't change it.  It is the only way I know she is alive, these calls that a nurse is going to draw blood.  She calls me honey, you poor thing. Says she won't touch it.  I am going there now, she says.  Hug her for me, I ask.  She says she will.

This morning the harbor was full of sea smoke rising into thin air.  The house was warm when I got home, warm enough.  I did the things I meant to do: washed a sink full of dishes, swept a room, wrote a poem.  I was thinking of that last cup of coffee in the pot.  When I finally stopped to get it I found the pot empty, the coffee maker off.  I am nearly certain somebody snuck in and took it.

Free-hand embroidery inspired by Haeckel.

 

 

 

This year I am thinking about embroidery floss and walnut ink.  I am trying to slide into the right notes.  I am making new habits to break.

Last night in my dream my mother had become small, the size of a large baby.  Her limbs were curled in and her body hunched so it resembled a beetle.  She was being kept in a little shack on a stone pier.  My sister and I took turns holding her, comforting her. The young women taking care of her and the inventory in the shack tried to get me to initial things in metallic markers:  a crate of antique toys in gold, a bag of yarn in copper.  I refused.

My sister looked at me and said "I don't want to be here."  I said the same to her.  Then our car, parked on the stone pier, decided it didn't want to be there either, and it rolled into the water.

I spent the rest of my dream battling with water, trying to release a cardboard box of snakes and small mammals which had been buried on a crowded beach.

I woke up exhausted.

 This morning walking to get the car there is grey everywhere: the streets, the sky, everywhere.   A woman walked toward me.  As she got closer I could see my name tattooed across her chest. 

I know my mother is alive because this morning the nurse called my house accidentally but once or twice a week I dream she has died and I wake with some phantom pain.

Everything is heartbreak today.  The woman with the car doors open.  The empty recycling bin. 

There is a space somewhere under my rib cage.  It is weary, aching, like a waiting room.

 I lit a candle. Ate an orange. Wrote a poem on the wall.

Still it sits, still, that hollow, dreading being filled.

I used to have ideas.  I remember having them.  Thinking things, then putting them into words.   Ideas that weren't connected to the people in front of me or the dishes or city politics.  Ideas that came from other ideas or the sky or books or the way two shades of blue looked next to an empty box.

I told a lie yesterday.  That losing my wallet was more of a hassle than having my identity stolen.  The old lady at the party smiled at me because she had just lost her purse or it had been stolen and she was deep into getting everything sorted out.  But I don't worry at all when I lose my wallet.  And when my identity was stolen I thought about who I was and how little it had to do with my finances.  And how much it did.  And when all your money goes away it hardly matters where it goes. 

My uncle Bernie's paintbrushes.  A bobbin of yellow merino. A Moominpappa figurine.

I am dusting frames.  I am sorting change. I am drinking too much coffee because I don't have your address.

It's hard, these days, to find a thing to say.  I mean to find a thing to say that someone might say something back to.  It's hard to have someone say something back.  It is all too much.

Last night there were six drummers waiting to play.  They each had their own style.  One a little more uptight, another had jazzy flick of the wrist.  One played earnestly.  One without a care in the world.  I was happy listening to each of them.

Today at the kitchen table we talked about words and poets and people.  The sun was shining through the dirty window behind him.  That window is my window, I thought.  I am a housewife with dirty windows.  I should clean that window, I thought.  I know I won't.

I don't know what makes better words or better drummers or better poets or better people.  I know what makes a window dirty.  It is dirt on the window.

Trying for the life of me to think of some words that ring true.

Try these on, I say. 

I won't wear these to school, she says. 

The past week she has been tucking her long blond hair up under a cap and going to school as the new boy.  She wears hand-me-downs from her cousins and pants from her brother's drawer.  She calls herself Robert.

I know, I say.  I didn't get them for you to wear to school. 

She expected a fight.  I'm not fighting.  I unzip the brown leather boot and hold it out to her.  She pulls the boot on and looks at me.  I am not wearing these to school.

I got them for running with your bow and arrow, I say.  Boots on, she leaves the room. 

Hours later she is running through the living room, bow slung across her chest, long hair behind her, pink pants tucked into her brown leather boots.  She is singing at the top of her lungs.  I don't know what she is calling herself now.

Today's snow unshoveled on the walk.  Blankets hung in the windows.  So much is going undone that eating leftovers feels productive.

Two aisles in and I find myself sad in Market Basket.  I can't even make myself smile at the old people so I try not to make eye contact.  Not even with the white-haired woman who lived with Danuta.  I decide to skip much of the store.  Get what we need for lunches and dinner.  Look toward the end of the aisle.  By frozen foods I am nearly crying.

I end up in the wrong check out lane.  The woman ringing in my food smiles and jokes.  I make a smile back at her.  The boy bagging can't look up and can't start until he has all the food in front of him.  He changes his mind about where the spinach goes.  Lines the soda water up so the labels face the same way.  I want to be home.  The air outside is cold and full of memories.  I want to be home where no one will talk to me.  Where no one will remember him to me.

Outside, groceries in  the back of the truck and the door won't close.  Broken maybe from the cold or maybe from being old and tired.  I drive home with one hand clutching the wheel, the other holding the door shut.  On right turns it opens a crack and the alarm sounds until I can pull it closed again.  On left turns I ease my grip.  I make it through two rotaries, past a police officer and home.

One is the song stuck in my head.
Two are the children up in their beds.
Three is the ache that won't go away.
Four are the bills still left to pay.
Five are the points on the morning star.
Six are the strings on my old guitar.
Seven is loneliness.  Always.  Again.
Eight is the turnaround.  Turnaround then
Nine is the steps walking back to the start
Ten it is over and time to part.

All of a sudden the night isn't young. 
I forgo all that is left undone--
the cleaning, responding, the bills and the work
so that years from now my daughter
will remember me playing the fiddle
downstairs while she was falling asleep.