Hallowed Out and Lit Up

(photo (and ghost!) by Nicole, but bottom right jack-o-lantern by me! )

The temperature drops after dark, after dinner, on the walk back to the library. Chili spice still hot on my breath vaporizes and vanishes. I trip on the mismatched bricks, too busy searching for gum to notice. My toes too numb to care. Turn the corner to see the Cat in the Hat and a toilet paper mummy. I shove my hands into my pockets and remind myself how much I dislike Halloween. Keep my eyes on the law school, my fingers wrapped around the bags of candy, count the pieces through the plastic, one, two, three, four...

Front door locked, back door open, bright lights, and concrete stairs. The table under the clock is always empty. Except for the times I’m always sitting there. They’ll stop by to say hello, as they make their way to the bathroom, the front stairs, the book that we’ll never pick up again but need for this assignment. When it’s quiet, when my nose has stopped running, when my cheeks are rosy but not raw, I pop a found piece of gum and head upstairs. To the quiet corner where I’ll deliver the treat-sized candy and my fears. We’ll murmur quietly even though the floor holds only us and the hum of the heaters blowing lukewarm air. I sit on the floor, against the metal shelf, looking up as he smiles down.  Looking at my shoes as I wonder how much is mine to take. Quietly, I’m breathing in and out. Hallowed out and filled.

***

I skip out of the early round of daylight trick-or-treaters, promising to return for the late-night stragglers. Grab a handful of candy and forget how much I dislike Halloween. The air, my car, and I are all warmer than expected. I keep the heat off and that song on repeat. It plays two and a half times before I’m parking my car in the back of the building, running up the stairs, and tossing my books onto the carrel’s top. Flop into the chair. Get up and move the bucket under the dripping ceiling. Think about using my own carrel rather than theirs. See their smiling faces and mine in photographs taped to the back of the carrel and decide against it. In the next couple of hours I inhale most of my snatched candy, manage to get only three shades of highlighter between my fingers, and nearly lose my appetite by the time he comes down to get me for dinner.

If the frozen smiles of my friends bear a warning, I don’t see it. I shove open the doors on our way down and scowl when he tells me I need more protein. We both know how heavy that door is. I’m stronger than I look - I’m still walking this hallway, aren’t I? I’m still here. Inhaling candy and dinner and him, spitting out the new wedding ring. Sitting across from, next to, in front of... his foot always on the rung of my chair. We’re bickering and he teases and we’re relentless, as I wonder how much I am breaking. I’m carefully within the lines but with abandon. I’m reckless with only that which I can claim as mine, and I leave everything else alone.

Until I’m walking through the dark parking lot, spooked by ghosts of the future, and I lay my head down on the steering wheel, careful not to blow the horn - although I’d like to wrap my arms around it and squeeze. I want to hear the horn blaring, and alerting, and breaking the silence and my smile.

Tears don’t come, so I drive home slowly. Pick out a dragon and a princess on separate streets and pair them together in my head. Fated to be together until I realize it is the prince and the princess who have the destiny. It’s the dragon who breaths the fire. I laugh or scream, I can’t tell which, as “Slow Dancing in a Burning Room” clicks back to its beginning.

They’re sitting on the stairs to the driveway in the dark. Drinking pumpkin beer, with a sound system set up - notes and screeches, and ghosts, and chains echoing into the night. Harmonizing with mine. I’m still somewhere in that lost land between tears and laughter, but the night’s still warm and with them I know I am safe. So, I join them on the stairs, my hand in the candy bowl, reeling in the rest of myself from the dark. Counting the pieces of candy through the plastic, one, two, three, four... but I’m gritting my teeth and forcing my breaths in and out, hallowed and full.  Structured, controlled breaths, and perfect posture on the steps, even though I’m bursting and soaring and screaming and weeping in silence. Even though I’m out there somewhere scattered or shattered or whole in the dark.

So I get up and I start to dance. And they let me. Alone in the dark driveway, I’m collecting pieces of myself, scooping and reaching and bending and stretching. Until the hour comes when the street is empty and the kids who never came never will. Until I’m panting, and they gently collect me, and bring me inside. Where I fall into my bed with all of my pieces finally mine again. At least until he and I crash through them together once again - scattered, shattered, and whole. Hallowed out and lit up.

In Which I Write To Sort Things Out (And Really Don't Expect You To Get To The End, Promise)

Sometimes on rainy Wednesday afternoons, the best thing to do is sit on the couch with a cup of coffee and watch a marathon of Sex and the City episodes on dvd. 

It's not that I don't have things I could be doing, perhaps should be doing, but this afternoon I needed a break.  My life has been swimming around inside my head lately, rather than playing itself out in real-time.  I haven't been sleeping well.  I needed to check out for a bit, and the best way I know how is by checking in with my four favorite NYC ladies.  With a cup of coffee, of course.

In Which The Nights Have Their Own Ideas

It begins with an extra toss, an extra turn, and too many sighs.  The clock minutes change too many times before they disappear.  It begins with a dream that feels uncomfortable and ends suddenly against a dawn sky.  Light blue and gray skies mix as I roll over.  I move my hands from over my head and place them under my chin, where they belong.  Drift off again, without tagging those hours as a nightmare.  Forget the minutes, the nightmare, the hands by morning.  Recall the distant memory during the third sip of afternoon coffee and then again that night when those minutes begin to grow. 

It grows into tangled blankets, warm legs, and too many sighs that turn guttural with frustration.  The clock hours change too many times before they disappear.  Denial and acceptance roll into each other as I refuse to press play on a lullaby and begin to panic about tomorrow's productivity and dark circles.  When sleep finally comes, it arrives with jagged nightmares that end with my arms over my head and fists clenched in the dark night.  It takes too long to pull them down, to tuck them under.  It doesn't take long enough to fall back to sleep and back into those hours that I've already tagged as nightmares.  They'll haunt me during that third sip of afternoon coffee.

Too many days later, and too many hours passed, I'll find out that last year's lullabies still soothe.  The same ones I found during those nights I memorized the intersections of the four walls and ceiling.  They fill the darkness and rock me to sleep.  Quiet my mind with their notes.  Quiet my heart to a steady beat.  Notes tumble over my bed, but I'm drifting, falling sound asleep.  They'll dance around me all night and scatter at the sound of my alarm.  If I had turned to them sooner, morning would not come as such an unwelcome surprise, but my afternoon coffee will taste like cream and sugar rather than stale nightmares.

Sleep feels heavy and consuming tonight.  I'll slip in quietly and let it wash over me.  A surrender that brings peace, if not a peaceful surrender.  My body finally disconnected from my mind, and a heart without, without, without.  Quiet, still sleep. The kind that needs a hand placed on the back, on the chest, in front of the nose, just to make sure... disconnected but still here.  So still.  Quiet.  Dangerously safe.

My Friends Are Talented: Part II

Bee opened an Etsy Shop! 

  So cute!  So adorable!  Love this.  (!!!)

Bicycle Baby Onesie by BeeDZigns

#Rambling

 I have weird dreams all the time.  They're not quite as weird as Nicole's, but let's just say that living together enabled very interesting morning coffee conversation. ("So last night, I had this dream, that the bug crawling up the wallpaper was talking to me."  "But wait, you don't have wallpaper!")  I can usually pinpoint the source or meaning of my wacky dreams and re-telling them is just fun.  And of course, there are the teeth falling out and tornado nightmares that I have down to an analytic science.  Don't bother googling them - they all basically mean that I feel as though my life is out of control, which happens pretty often if you're as much of a control freak as I am.  At least when it comes to my own life - I try to leave yours alone.  Haha?  ANYWAY...  I had a dream the other night, and I have no idea how to interpret it.  I thought maybe you guys could give me some help?

So, in this dream, I'm sitting on a bed, holding someone's hand, talking to him about the things you talk about when you have somebody new in your life and he's cute. (Read: I have no idea what we were really talking about, but I think it was a playful conversation. Also, he may not really be new in my life, but this sitting on a bed holding hands together part definitely is.  But I'm choosing to ignore that entirely.  Feel free to follow my lead.) When I looked over at him, he wasn't sitting next to me anymore.   He had detached from his arm at the shoulder and was standing across the room folding a load of white laundry.  I was still holding his hand, which was attached to his arm, which lay next to me, NOT attached to his body.  Let me say this again for full effect: I was sitting on the bed, holding his hand, which was attached to his arm, which he had detached from his body.  Zombie-like.  Just an arm.  Lying next to me.  While he stood across the room folding laundry with the other arm. 

This slightly (yes, really, only slightly) concerned me, so I told him that I wasn't sure if I should consider the detached arm sweet or insulting.  I mean, *of course* he must have really wanted to continue holding my hand if he detached his arm from his body to do so, but I was also mildly upset that he didn't want to sit next to me anymore.  I apparently had no concern over that fact that he was either A) a zombie or B) probably in need of some medical attention for that detached arm. I was just very upset that *gasp* he no longer wanted to sit next to me.  (Looking back, he was definitely a zombie, because, come on, who would want to fold laundry with one arm?  Or fold laundry at all, really.)  ANYWAY... I was really perplexed as to whether detaching from his arm was sweet or insulting, which he tried to address, because he walked over, reattached his arm, looked me in the eyes, kissed me on the cheek, and went back to folding the laundry.  I, apparently upset that this was going to be a g-rated dream, promptly woke up.  Uhhh......?  Interpretations, please!

In Which I Write My Future. Or, Is This Too Much To Ask For? [Part I]

The alarm goes off, and it takes me too long to realize that I'm the one who has to turn it off.  The room is cold, but my blankets are warm.  My deepest moments of gratitude always come before wakefulness, when my warm bed holds me without suffocating and I'm in the space between day and night.  A deep breath of gratitude before I take that quick breath and swing my legs over the side of my bed. Inhale.  If I could form a coherent thought, I would note that there was a time when getting up meant walking across my ground level mattresses and stepping off the end into the space between the two walls no wider than my two mattresses.  I would note it and file it away quickly, because early-morning-before-dawn isn't conducive to measuring strides and steps forwards and backwards.  I walk to the shower in the dark and don't open my eyes until I'm standing under the hot water, almost scorching, almost soothing.  Slowly coaxing me into my day. 

Not until the shower clicks off does my day begin.  I don't spend enough time drying off and slip down the hallway on the bottoms of my wet feet.  It's a mad dash to dress before the goosebumps become permanent.  I've learned from piles of discarded outfits to chose the night before and promise myself not to think long enough in the morning to change my mind.  This is not a difficult promise to keep.  My long underwear hugs my damp skin too closely, and I tell myself to slow down, but it's too late - I already have one leg in my pants and an arm in my shirt.  I don't take the time to revel in my secret undergarments, choosing a warm, comfy secret over Victoria's secret, and I know that hours later I'll laugh to myself at the thought of navy long underwear tucked tightly under this business attire.  It's the type of secret that somebody who can always stand to gain ten pounds can safely keep. 

Before my hair is dry, I'll race downstairs and out the door for a shock sentence of cold.  Pull my car out of the garage into the dark and start it, turning the heat dial to high.  Race back inside, tripping over the dog, and feeling badly for not reaching down.  I'll dry my hair and check my make-up, evaluating how well I covered those dark circles - never well enough.  This time I stop to say goodbye to the dog.  We have our morning routine of "lick and dodge" where she does the licking and I dodge her tongue - my face needs all the help it can get; I can't let her lick off my haphazardly applied make-up.  Our time together is never long enough.  I race out the house and down the garage stairs every morning with the fears of falling down the stairs and depleting the ozone with my running car.  Scold myself for a dirty car and hair still semi-wet but promise myself not to get stuck in this mood.  You are always cranky before morning coffee and all that comes next.  Let it pass.

Pull out of the drive way while turning the heat down and the radio on.  Blow a kiss to the garage door closing. So grateful for that garage.  And what is behind it.  I leave fifteen minutes early so I can pop into Starbucks and fill my most recent travel mug with a latte without fear of being late.  Some mornings we chat, some mornings we just smile - 6:15 am is quiet and maybe that is how we like it best.  The first sip is all of the days past and all of the days to come and this moment today.  Zen.  Empty and full.  As it ever was/is/will be.  I drive too quickly between stoplights and pull into the parking space too slowly.  I'll wait for the train in silence, grateful for long underwear and hot lattes.  It isn't until I'm sitting on the train that the fear of being late finally subsides, always unwarranted, but ever-present.  It isn't until then that I can reach for my ipod and the day finally becomes mine. 

My first transfer comes twenty-five minutes later.  They hold the next train for us, and we step across the platform and scan for a seat.  I learned more than a decade ago to sit facing west, on the south side, as close to the window as possible.  The sun coming up over the East River will make my heart race and I will remember that this is almost what love feels like.  Until then, I'll scan my ipod and hit repeat more times than I would like to admit.  Pull out my ipad and cringe.  Try not to look around sheepishly at imagined scorn.  The ipad's new and it lets me keep up-to-date-on internet happenings and stay connected to e.v.e.r.y.o.n.e. and it's perfect because the train doesn't have wifi and verizon doesn't have an iphone service, but every morning I have to brush aside that feeling of you do not have enough to have this.  Brush aside the concern that I function too often in the realm of You Do Not Deserve This and rationalize that I negotiated an ipad for a three hour commute.  One way.  Firmly state, almost out loud, "I have the better end of this deal."  The sun does shine over the East River. 

I'm grateful that Grand Central underground doesn't turn me into a sweaty July mess, but I lose myself to the sea of black suits.  I do nothing more than hope they'll carry me through the chaotic halls and onto the subway where I begin, again, to worry that I will be late.  Where I close my eyes and wait until I'm above ground, covering the last few blocks in winter boots with dress pants tucked tightly around my ankles.  I'll peel off layers when I get to my office.  Change into heeled shoes and remember days when I did Important Work in sneakers, but I'll still look down with a glance at heels tucked under the desk.  Remember that this, too, is Important Work.  Smile quietly.

Mud Season Months Early

Stuck. Somewhere between day and night and in the center of those three notes colliding. The crash of rhythm and melody. I'm between hope and fear with belief clashing and thrashing and screeching for attention, for definition, for my hand. I'm standing in the middle of honesty, cleansed by its current but stripped down, to the center of everything and nothing, which always seem to be the same. Always the same. Loud and quiet, completely still. Anything but peaceful. Rolling over to emptiness, but sometimes I fill the space, the time, the moments, alone. A crescendo, waves rushing forward. Perfect circles. These seams can't contain that which I push against, wishing for the strength to shove and pound my fists, but honesty crumbles me and moves me. Back to where I began.

[if i knew how to install music to a single blog post, i'd post this song at the top.]

From The Department of Teen Dramas

Sometimes there are nights, after days that don't really go the way you want them to (sometimes on repeat), when you sit down in front of the CW (do you remember doing this in the days of the WB?) and indulge in someone else's struggle, drama, story arc. Sometimes you pull your computer into your lap and send emails of the show's one-liners in bold, huge, centered font to a friend who will, more likely than not, just get it. Sometimes she's in the same place in another state and always just gets it. And sometimes you are mostly kidding and sometimes you are mostly not. And sometimes, you unexpectedly have a fabulous night.

Tonight's Wisdom Gleaned From One Tree Hill 

(cut and paste from our emails, sans my huge, bold font)

• WHAT COMES NEXT? 
• I DON'T WANT TO BE ANYTHING OTHER THAN WHAT I HAVE BEEN TRYING TO BE LATELY.
• I KNOW THAT SOMETIMES UNEMPLOYMENT LEADS TO CRACK SMOKING, AND I UNDERSTAND THAT, BUT I THOUGHT YOU WOULD BE MORE EXCITED ABOUT THIS.
• YOU MAKE SAD LOOK BEAUTIFUL.
• I understand business, I understand what we COULD do. I also understand what is fair, what is right and what is honorable. Do I want you to accept this? And to support it? And to be proud of me for it? Yes. But if you don't, it doesn't matter to me, maybe for the first time.
• WHAT COMES NEXT IS UP TO YOU.
• we're going to be okay.
• I WILL BE [FINE] 'CAUSE OF YOU.
• FOCUS ON YOUR TALENTS, EVERYTHING ELSE WILL WORK ITSELF OUT.
• dont' focus on your work, focus on your life. you are young and beautiful.
• SO FOR NOW, I SAY GOODBYE TO THIS CHAPTER IN MY LIFE, AND I LOOK FORWARD TO WHAT COMES NEXT.

Home

I moved home in May because school ended.  I didn't have a job lined up.  Although, I did have plane tickets and hostel reservations and an international to-do list, thanks to my brother.  (I should tell you more often how much I adore my brother.)  I moved my belongings "back home" in typical "Emily-fashion", which means amid a whirlwind of activities with moving squeezed into a few spare hours.  I didn't spend any time thinking about endings or beginnings.  I technically moved before the end of the semester, skipped my own graduation, attended a couple of weddings, attended a friend's graduation, covered a handful of states in my CRV (including the one I had moved out of a week prior), fielded an interview, picked up my mom's new puppy, gave out a lot of love, and remembered how easy smiles can come. Holy crazybusy fun, Batman.  Then I hopped on a plane at JFK. 

I spent the next two weeks living, breathing, enjoying.  I made promises to myself.  I connected.  To myself.  To the world.

I came home.  To boxes.  To new furniture in my childhood bedroom.  To old memories.  To new realities. 

I didn't really unpack.  I set up a few belongings to make my old home actually feel like home.  I hung up my summer clothes, made up my bed, took inventory of the vast amount of space I had to call my own.  The most... ever?  Then I made plans to move.  To New York.  Brooklyn to be exact.  I applied to jobs in DC.  Talked to my parents about moving back to Maine.  Scrolled through job openings in North Carolina, Mississippi, California. Bookmarked websites for "jobs abroad".  Stepped over boxes.  Divided my belongings into mental lists of "this can stay" and "that can come".  Priced air mattresses, because there was no way I was lugging another bed in ANY move I made. 

I had a potential job opportunity in DC.  Fantastic for my career aspirations.  Terrible for my soul.  I did not expect the whirlwind of upset that would come with the prospect of moving to DC for a fantastic job (although my bank account would disagree, and that did play a role).  I found out that I didn't get the job.  I breathed a huge sigh of relief.  I decided to move home. 

Sure, my boxes had been here since mid-May.  And yes, I had been sleeping here since mid-June.  But I didn't decide to move here until the beginning of September.   I spent the summer waiting for the next move.

This summer I kept my belongings in boxes, but I unpacked everything else.  Dreams. Goals. Aspirations. Hopes. Loves. Fears. Failures. Successes. Values.  You've been a part of that.  Thank you. 

I'm living at home now.  How is living at home?  It's easy and hard in the very same moments.  It gives me room(s) to dream.  It gives me shelter from student loan debt that feels life-threatening.  (Shelter from: I can't live that life because I have this degree.)  It gives me a place to start my days and my life.  Deciding to live at home gives me a new beginning.  It takes away the excuse of "a transition" and replaces it with "Now, live your life."  I'm still unpacking, but it is everything now.

Love/Hate CrazyBusy

See that tag over there?  The one that says "love/hate crazybusy"?  I have a secret to tell you.  (Or maybe you already know?)  I miss using that tag.  My life has not been crazybusy for a few months.  In fact,  I don't think I could label it crazy or busy, so crazybusy is out of the question.  I miss it.  The last time I wasn't crazybusy was almost five years ago.  I lived in Vermont and worked about 45 hours a week.  My job was still a job (months later it would be a passion) and I spent most days waiting for the future (law school acceptance letter in my hand).  At night, I wrote in a blog without reservation, because only a handful of people knew it existed.  I think I had two readers the entire year. 

12th January, 2006. 12:14 am.
I went to the post office today for fun. Drove down the windy road a little too fast until I saw the icebergs in the river. 

She told me about the spring icebergs. Only it isn’t spring, and yet there they are. Jagged flats of ice, 8 inches thick that must float down the river until they catch on a rock. And others also accumulate there, shifting the weight until they’re all standing on end. 

So I slowed down to look at the spring icebergs on the river on my way to the post office for fun. But if it were spring all my questions would have answers. And there would be new questions. Or at least new variations of old questions. But my questions remain the same redundant questions that I’ve given up on. Perhaps that is why I am bored, because I have stopped asking questions. And instead I go to the post office for fun.

My backyard in Vermont

Check out the time stamp - I have always been a night writer.  Even when I was not crazybusy, my words came easiest at night.  Perhaps out of habit.  Perhaps out of nature's that-just-how-I-work mentality (night owl!).  I think that time stamp, despite not being crazybusy, was the start of changing a lifestyle that didn't fit quite right.  Weeks later, I was nostalgic for spring semester of my senior year of college when I hardly slept and drank my weight in coffee. 

19th February, 2006. 9:23 pm.
Hot cappuccino in the paper cup, green and thin, the warmth burns my hands before I remember to grab the cardboard sleeve. An extra boost added to my steady adrenaline flow, caramel colored but vanilla sweetness; even with caution I burn my tongue. If I could just learn to wait, I know that by the time I arrive the iced air will cool its contents enough to drink.

This year I don’t need cappuccino from a machine; I could sleep twelve hours a night if I wished. But I don’t. I’m too busy waiting for life to need a hot cappuccino in a paper cup.

The great thing about reading these old posts is that I know what happens.  That post was in the middle of February break for the school, and when I returned on Monday, my entire would would start to flip upside down.  I'll tell you the story sometime, but my days got long (I clocked a 90 hour week during March!), and my work consumed my heart, and I started drinking coffee every morning.

Part of that transition happened over night (due to an event that I wish didn't exist - be careful what you wish for!), and part of that transition happened because I decided to live a life I wanted, even if it didn't make sense.   I am happier when I am crazybusy.  So I decided to be crazybusy.  It worked - almost too well.  But it worked.  Do you see where I am going with this?  Do you think I am crazy?  I've decided to be crazybusy again - starting tomorrow.  I'm good with making to-do lists and starting projects, so tomorrow, I become crazybusy.  (Yes, I know, it is too perfect that the word crazy is in that term.  I've got to try this though, stick with me!)

I've been thinking about faith a lot lately.  Not in terms of religion, but more of what I believe out of the all of the things that one could believe.  Does everything happen for a reason?  Does hard work pay off?  Does it all come out in the wash?  If I had any worthwhile thoughts to share, I would write a post about it, but I don't think I do at this point, so I'll leave it at that.  BUT I have come up with somethings that I do know I have faith in - Crazybusy.  Coffee.  Writing (especially late at night).  Taking photos... 

Crazybusy is a part of who I am.  I'm happiest when I am busy.  (This is probably because I am also invested in what I am doing and thus busy.)  Busy has saved me from rough patches many times in the past.  Busy saved me the last time I found myself daydreaming about needing a late-night caffeine boost.  So I'm going to try it again.  Am I advocating this method as a healthy way to move through a rut in life?  Noooo... definitely not.  BUT I think the things I am going to keep myself busy with are healthy and productive (see that little list up there) AND I need to start leaning on the things I know I have faith in.  I'll let you know how it goes....

 The view from the hill mountain behind my apartment in Vermont

Mary Oliver

She recited lines of poetry to me that night, although I’m sure she wouldn’t remember.  As we moved through the house, I bore witness to life shattering.  I searched for the poem in the days before the funeral, when the first few weeks of July would no longer ever be just the first few weeks in July.  When I began to realize that I held something I may not ever be able to share, in words, in tears, in tangible form, because I was an accidental tangle of too far removed and too close.  I held her hand.  And that was all and that was everything.

***

I collected Mary Oliver’s words unintentionally this past year.  Leaves fell last October as easily as my tears.  The sky darkened early in November, but my nights grew longer still, bare and aimless.  A last leaf in November, hanging on to nothing more than a spider’s abandoned silk.  Perhaps I picked up a few of her words among brown leaves blowing over the sandy shores.  The ocean’s wind bites in November. 

I waited for the snow of the year past to return last year.  Quiet and strong reasons to hibernate and burrow and sleep for endless days, curled up in that warm corner.  It never came.  Sometime during the warm December, the wind kissed my cheeks and made me blush; it was unexpected and I was uncertain.  I took off layers of myself and hung them in the back of the closet, instinctively knowing that this winter I would not need this coat, that sweater, these titles, those identities.  Maybe I pulled a few of her words out of the back corner of that closet.  From the spot I wanted to curl up in, but instead stripped down.  To nothing and to everything.  Sometimes they are the same. 

Spring came early.  Spring came late.  I’ll never remember.  I left often, returned far less often.  I’ll remember the waves without the wind or the grained shores.  The moon’s perfect fit in my closet window.  Keeping watch over me.  I wrote down her name after reading a poem on the internet.  I’ll never remember if I thought her syllables sounded familiar.  How quaint to say that I bloomed that season.  I won’t.  I did and I didn’t, I’ll never remember.  I left often.  I let the moon watch over me. 

Summer sun dried the rain of the summer before.  I burned and the sand blazed.  The nights wilted, but I could breath in the dark.  Deep breaths.  The rivers still ran, and I found my footing in soft grass, cool morning dew.  I found her name on a brand new spine, upright on the fourth shelf from the bottom.  Mary Oliver.  She came with me to the ocean side, and I read her in late evening as summer set on the horizon.  Blazing red, promising promises with its departure.  I drank in some of her words, but left most - I thrive on concrete sidewalks, under bright lights, in pedestrian walkways, when horns blare too loudly.  I don’t connect to nature.  Days later, the September butterflies danced.

***

This rainy afternoon in October, I clicked on a link and her poem was there.  Those lines from that night, unexpectedly standing on the shoulders of Mary Oliver’s name.  “Determined to do the only thing you could do - determined to save the only life you could save.”   And that was all and that was everything.