Journal of the Abandoned Sort

October 9, 2008

I tried to write about something curled between my feet. Not a snail, not a rope. It's not even hissing. It just lies there, changing shape.

Knots build their homes between my ribs. I can't stop them. I can't breathe in without canceling out what should have been yesterday's lecture.

Because even if wanted to, my hands are too small.

My fingers smell like juniper. It's useless, thinking about snails coming out of their shells. I can't contain anything like that. It's absurd!

But look, I'm writing about something I'm trying not to write about. It's chewing it's way through. I will possess these eyes until I die. The sockets will shut down, will vibrate a little, then quiet. What will they do but feel a sort of dull ache, wait for a new pair, and starve?

Earlier, I went running because that's the only way I can feel anything. Not because I can't burn the roof of my mouth with morning coffee, not because of that. But because even the slightest brush against me and I pull in a bit, around the stomach. There's a leaping that occurs. Manage this for a year, I ask you. Tell me if you don't feel as though you're slowly dissolving.

Because I do, sometimes. What's to tether me to earth but a Juniper? Or something smokey-sweet. Because it's real and immediate. Because I can't wake without standing on one foot, and then the other, sloughing off heaviness of dreams.

I want to gather you up in my arms. I was going to say, pieces of sea-glass, but by that, I mean you. You're kind of smoothed off at the edges from years of collecting things in bottles, things like coins minted only on even numbered years. And because all numbers have distinctions, I wait until seven in the evening to think, just then, about your hands. Seven saves her hours in a bottle for you. Somewhere, she will reveal her true pattern, or, that's what I keep repeating to myself.

At the edge of what I write, haze gathers. Knots come again, before bed. I shrug it off the best I can. I fold and unfold my glasses. I count out the time, visualizing roman numerals. This doesn't help with sleep, but it does relax the mind. Still, there's the curling at the feet again, there's knots and the questions of how my body works so consistently, even when I don't want it to. There's faith. Against odds.