{ i've run out of original titles }

every time i go to title one of these things, the first word that comes to mind is french, and it's quelquefois, which means sometimes, and i have no idea why it's always there on the tip of the tongue of my mind. NO IDEA. it makes me think of my brain as a scratched vinyl record endlessly spinning unsteadily on some dusty old player. and somehow, when i get here, the note it's scratching over is quelquefois, and i don't know how that happens, but it's one of the unexplained phenomenons of my life. in case you care.

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sometimes i read things i've written and i think things like, who was that and i didn't write that. it's the strangest sensation. and if for some reason i think it's "good" i think, there's no possible way i wrote that and when i can face the fact that i DID in fact write it, i think things like, where did that come from and why don't i do that all the time.

give me the strength to carry these wounds,

puckered skin beneath my clothes, losses

notched into my bones. give me the grace

to walk the wall, the uncanny ear for lurking

mines, the imperfect healing

that only comes with time.

i mean, who wrote that? because it certainly wasn't me, this properly postured girl in a swiveling office chair, sipping office coffee neglecting her office work. it was some other girl on a quiet street with a dirty face and disheveled hair, not very put-together looking but ultimately engaged with her lifeblood. connected. connected to what? herself. these are the words of a broken girl on her way to being put back together.

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i don't know if we're ever put back together, not all the way. i grew up thinking that as years were added to my life, so would a lot of other things: boyfriends who became fiances who became husbands, children, property, vehicles, money, security. i grew up thinking men and progeny and mortgages were security. but at my age i look back and although i've received so many gifts in my life, for the most part things have been subtracted from me: people, relationships, previous understandings, security. i don't feel like i live in a city populated with confirmed structures i thought i had the blueprints for. i feel like i walk streets with meteor-sized craters. what was there has been blown away, and from the ruins i must rebuild.

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it all sounds very desolate and my life is by no means desolate, at least not from the outside. that's the thing about being me (about being many of you, no doubt) --- you'd never know from looking at me and watching me and maybe even "knowing" me fairly well that my inner landscape is still kind of blown out, even so many years after the bomb. i think a lot of my subconscious energy goes into maintaining an outer presentation that won't make anyone uncomfortable. or maybe it's not even that noble --- maybe i just don't want anyone to find me weak. or feel sympathy for me, because i don't feel like most of us have very unfettered ways of expressing sympathy. i don't want to need anybody and i certainly don't want anybody to know or even suspect that i need him. or her. this isn't even about romance. it's about humans. did i not say that already?

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none of this is "good" writing, but i haven't really tried to write anything beautiful for awhile and i have to work through the chaff first. in fact, i think my most beautiful writing often comes without effort at all --- it's just there, and i open my mind and it falls out like a handful of jewels. those are the good days. or maybe these are the good days, the days i sit down to write without feeling like there's much there at all, but i'm here and i'm doing it and nobody had to give me a syllabus or a due date. i don't believe the only thing i have to do in life is show up, but i do think showing up is more important than i realize.

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my hands are cold. my hands

are never cold. i'm beginning to believe

there's some ghostly ancient floe

resting silently in me that keeps my ribs numb

and everyone else at bay. i'm smoking, see?

these are the wisps of a glacial girl meeting

the world. i'm told there's hope for survival,

for warmer days, for the courageous persistent

push of spring. so as the world turns,

as the axis tilts, as bones melt and mend,

we shall see.