trace

Today at work was silly. This damn judge wouldn't sign for his own damn package, even when he had it in his hands. I came back three times, but his clerks were never back from lunch.

This morning, at my second drop of the day, at 700 S Clinton, I got locked in the building because the locksmith who was working on the door was across the street getting breakfast. We all stood around for a while until finally the manager walked me through some long office and out the side door instead.

Looking at all these maps and lines and sketchy outlines of plans, it gets my blood flowing and my head whirling and there are so many roads and so many destinations so let's just spin blindfolded and point and head in any random direction we choose, til we hit something big and beautiful or just small and lovely like the dirt beneath our feet.

In high school, I taped maps to my walls with my route across the country traced in hot pink highlighter. It faded in the sunlight, but I still know which roads to follow with my finger along those dusty walls.

(Do you remember how easy it was being drunk and lonesome and brave?)

animal rights

Undercooked apple coffee cakes bundled up in towels in my bag to bike through the downpour to that vegan potluck and some familiar faces, and kittens everywhere making me sneeze. I've reverted to more shyness than usual, lately. It's been a rough year. A nervous stumbling, hands outstretched and back tensing - I rush to spill my giddy guts before we part ways.

We met in the middle, carrying chocolate and tea, and went on an epic sort of walk down sidewalks and alleys and train tracks over chilly streets until the pads of my feet ached for rest. The backs of buildings always look so different than I remember, so different from how they pass out of the corner of yr eye as you bike on by.

relent

Wishes like thick, scratched chunks of glass.

Come home so I can write you a love song, or don't, so I can hammer out my goodbyes.

It's disillusionment each time, sour in the back of my throat, heavy on my spine. It's hope rising and cresting and falling, words escaping me unspoken. You are far away and I can't picture yr face and maybe you were nothing but a dream or an invention, nothing but the scent of milk and oranges assaulting my nostrils. In the end, we flounder. We flail and sink and the best of our intentions trip on their own soft ankles. My thighs are at rest. My toes clench unconsciously. The ground is pounding upwards at my heels.

I want to believe harder that these things we do are right and useful and I want to know that the sky is electric every single night.

carolina

Economic discussions, rosemary orange biscuits, and long long bike rides along the highway to get to where more people are. I walked right in and started flipping pancakes while we slowly got to know each other. We ate apples and oat groats and some kids left for a wedding and then we sorted books and wrote letters in the garage, mailed off packages to prisons, biked off for burritos and popsicles and a meeting in an old bookstore that will be a bookstore again.

Before that, we played backgammon and walked around the botanical garden and the storyteller's bench and peppers far too hot to eat that burned and sizzled on my tongue so i was licking the roof of my mouth for far too long afterwards. Before that, we danced late at night to zydeco, in a tent under dark skies, drinking from a big growler of local beer.

Before that, I left Chicago and sank into the warm embrace of the place I'll always call home.

hullabaloo

I read Ghost World in German, courtesy of Nicole, and with my own English copy for reference when I needed it. When I was in high school, that book resonated with me in such a different way. It seemed inspiring, and hopeful, and funny, and this time around every part felt so melancholic. And so real. There is so much melancholy in our dumb lonely lives sometimes. So much joy, too, though. Things are fun, things are weird and nonsensical and beautiful.

At Brew Not Bombs I drank some good homebrew and had some good conversations and danced to some good banjo tunes. Oh man. Each time I thought I was about to leave, something new came up. So many faces I've been wanting to see, so many friends to grab onto and jump around and dance and keep each other upright, how lovely.

I can't wait to get to North Carolina and smell trees and clay and sky.

tailwind

Time goes by. Things like that happen. My toes curl inward of their own volition, and so do yours. We're circling, hackles raised, but our necks are growing weary. We'll wake up stiff tomorrow. We'll unroll like tentacles reaching across a briny mess. We'll hang these tapestries from our walls, to signal a loud and resilient "yes".

Spattering talk is multiplicity. These soft words are incantations. My eyelids are window weights; yr limbs beside mine could lull me into hovering sleep. Unline my face, relax my strained forehead. I am too young, and too old. I forget where my good graces went. I tell people the same things every day, but what's the difference? I am consumed with inertia. She said, we must have a tailwind; how lovely.