Looking For Replacement.

The shade was drawn this morning but I still woke up with the sun in my eyes.

And Today Was A Day.

Holidays don't do much for me anymore. I spent my Thanksgiving quarantined in my bedroom while my family celebrated downstairs, couldn't take any chances getting my grandparents sick.

Laying in bed, I was thinking about how all my life I've saved last resorts for help and how the few times I've been reduced to them, I've found that they've never really existed at all. It happened today. I shouldn't have been alone.

I suppose I should say what I'm thankful for, although so many blessings have come with curses, "our double-edged sword" you called it. I'm thankful to love and to be loved. I'm thankful you're alive. I'm thankful for songs that have been written about me. I'm thankful for our night at the ocean, the cigars and shooting stars.

You Don't See It.

I stumbled through the dark room crying, thinking about the light from the television on my face, wondering if my tears were illuminated by it, and then about other times I've done the same. Waking up on a couch and facing a grey August morning, my face beautiful in the light, turned away, hidden. Trying to come up with a spontaneous, sorrowful Kerouac haiku in my head. Even this morning, disappointed in the gold first light, casting a perfect shadow on the wall above my pillow. Desperate times call for a desperate, misplaced kind of confidence, I suppose.

Thank you for getting me out of there, for walking with me in the night. It didn't feel as desolate as it would have otherwise, in the middle of the wind and stars.

I Wanted To Live Deliberately.

I watched "Dead Poet's Society". It ended, sky darkening. I put on my ski jacket from when I was twelve and my mother's boots. It wasn't very cold outside. The ground was very wet. I hung upside down from a swing, legs wrapped around the ropes. I stayed for a minute or so, then went back inside, not with the words "carpe diem" on my mind, but "put to rout all that was not life".

Meet Me in the Morning.

Days have been good, slow and comfortable. Nights have been bad, anxious and sorry and desperate. It's the dreams that get me. I can't even remember them now.

And So I Did.

He was a stranger to me too, sitting at the head of the table in a wheelchair, next to my grandfather at the nursing home. He looked tired, too wise and weather to be upset. Someone said he was ninety-seven years old. He silently watched the feeble conversations unfold, between the nine people there that were not him. Maybe he was listening, maybe not.

Eyes sweeping, caught, with some hope for recognition, I saw him looking back.

"Hey-" The words caught me by so much surprise I nearly didn't hear them, "Keep smiling."

Get Well Soon.

I've taught myself how

and now I can't seem to stop

folding paper cranes.