Found my mouse. Quiet noon, practicing fiddle, heard the commotion of not being alone. Went to the basement stairs, moving the things around the noise. I have never been a good woman but I shrieked like a girl when I saw him.

Too hot yesterday, too hot to move and my mother shows up in white capris and black socks pulled up to her knees. Lunch together. The old men at the next table talk about my grandfather and my little boy. Spilled water, Walnut Street, little boys all look alike. Drive home through the heat sit down sit still. Popsicles in the bath tub. Kids to the park. Bug bites skinned knee dirty feet. Didn't get a thing done til the cool air came and I fell asleep.

Tuesday morning and the poppies are out. The air is hot and the world is noisier with the windows open. Yesterday's geraniums in the ground, last week's lilies still unplanted. Bird-song all around.

My hands are tired, man, tired. Everything I do I do with my hands. I do everything with my hands. Knit. Cook. Clean. Fiddle. I even read with my fucking hands. The rest of by body useless. That guy last night with his two broken hands and the scars up each. I want to build a house outside for the kids, with a counter and a roof and a bench to sit on. But there's no room. No fucking space. I can't cut a long line straight but I can measure. Stones on the floor, the expensive ones that don't hurt bare feet. A window. A trellis of sweet peas by the door.

Time for bed and the kids are tired of the songs I am singing. Think hard reach back my funny valentine goin' down the road quiet nights may there always be sunshine. There's a lot to do, not getting it done. Stomach hurts Virgina Woolf in the tub then off to bed.

Cleaning the fridge for soup. Losing time here and there and here again. Cucumbers in jar with dill from Gerrit. Piles of things to do. Sam in his pajamas. We are moving along.

Spring is turning to somewhere and everywhere I turn there is new growth. The peas are coming out from behind the blossoms. The radishes need to be thinned.

I am going to make this work.

Walking behind him on the way to the train. A list of Ians in my head. The one who lost himself out west. The one who The one who had sword fights in Glasgow and heroin here.

Thinking about the way men smell when they work. This one smells like wood. That one smells like stale cigarette sweat. The way men smell when they move things.

I am trying to notice things again.

Laundry to be folded int he new year, laundry and dishes and more of the same. My glasses are broken and they need to be fixed.

I have thirty dollars in the pocket of a pair of dirty jeans and I swear I am going to find it.

Monday night home from the bar and I'm awake and I'm tired. Dance music tonight but the floor was too full too crowded and I didn't want to fight my way up didn't want to dance in back. Girls with plucked eyebrows and tattooed backs and I can't shake the feeling I'm not being the person I mean to be.

Do you remember that time you came out to my bar? I just remembered it, just now.

Tonight a cab ride home never done that before and I'm not even drunk, not even tired. I wasn't dancing for anyone tonight even when the kids came. I could eat something now if there was something to eat, or call someone if I liked the phone. I am home and I don't even know if the Phillies won the Word Series.

Today she has lost her glasses. Athena from down the street is there with a flashlight looking for them. Athena who doesn't get it. Athena who keeps asking her to retrace her steps. We leave without her glasses. Athena stays to make herself a cup of coffee.

Quiet morning naked in bed tired-eyed knitting and listening and still. Cat on the covers lists of things to do lists and lists and things to do. Up into yesterday's jeans. Out into the old truck. Coffee in the sunshine morning. Yardsaling. Finding friends. Old glass buoys and clock cabinets.

I have wasted the day. Wonderful wasted day.

We are starting over.

Every day we wake up to a new light, a new chance, a new hope.

Every day is dashed to the ground like the days before it.

It is spring. There are plants in the garden. I am cooking dinner. The kids are upstairs playing. The air is cool.

I am trying to start a new story. But the story stays the same.

Afternoon and I am waiting for snow. I am full after eating the way you eat to get someone else to eat. As if it were charity.

I am trying to decide what in my life I have control over. What is a choice. Instead of sitting here letting it all wash over me.

What I read as a hangover this morning turns out to be something else. Getting sick. A cough, a headache. A tightness in my lungs. I can feel it like a train coming.

Angry this morning at how sloppy people are. A sign on the door-- "Thanks from all of us." Sloppy sign. Sloppy with words. And I got angry, with my hangover head. Careless. Careless people. Careless and closed-off. Like it doesn't matter.

Words and pictures. We put them everywhere. When I say I love you, you think I am selling you soap.

At the cafe a woman sits with her back to me talking to the photographer. He tells her the story of each picture and as he is talking I can imagine what each one is. The bow cutting across the water. The gravestones. The buildings.

My mother is late. I drink more coffee than I should waiting for her. Sam eats cream cheese off of a bagel. He reads a book.

When she gets there she is all aflutter. Bags of canvases and paints. I get her a cup of coffee. I get her rye toast. We work on her homework: lists of things, categories. Lists of how to do things. We go to her house. As she learns how to find her words Sam crawls under the table, around the chairs. By the time we are done he is covered in dog hair.

We drive downtown doing this week's homework. How a fence is different from a wall. How they are the same.

When I pick Abigail up she is holding an invisible baby bird in her hands. She asks us to be quiet so the baby bird can sleep. By the time we get home the baby bird is awake. She lifts her hands out the car door and lets it fly away.

work

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Originally uploaded by Mandy K

How we spend our days.

He's gone away for a week. She is upset about it, about being alone without him. So we make sure she is not alone. We write our names on a calendar. We commit to time. Each day we will check on her, see her, make sure she is not alone.

Today I take her to get coffee. In her purse is a large container of organic yogurt. She puts it on the table at the cafe. She pulls out a white shirt with a black stain. She is going to fix it, she says. Then I can have it. It will be as good as new. She trips on her words. They come out sideways.

When Sam makes eyes at a little girl my mother tells a man it is love in place. Nobody cares that her words are wrong. Nobody is listening.

Oatmeal for breakfast. Kids are coughing, just a little, into the tub and out to play. Pull on torn jeans and slip on heels to mail a letter.

Cut tomatoes and fresh mozzarella, basil and olive oil into bread. Stale crackers onto the porch for the birds. Dance around the kitchen. Hang the upstairs rug to dry. Still finding beer bottles and glasses of bourbon and grappa and eggnog and wine. Bags of Waragi and plates of chocolates.

Kiss the kids as they run through and send them up to play. Reheat coffee. This year I will live the way I mean to. Make better use of my resources. Write more letters.

This year I will act out of love.