a dead-end summary

It's January 31, 2014.

I've been engulfed by a tidal wave of really difficult schoolwork. It bores, yet terrifies, me. I've had an eye twitch for three weeks.

I feel inadequate, unequal to the task, and it makes me want to hit things. Instead, I'll wear a brighter lipstick shade.

I want a flower garden tattooed over my arms and legs.

I planted seeds at the beginning of the semester, but they haven't come up yet.

Too many deadlines. I thought I had my act together, but here I am scrambling for control.

I wish I had a puppy to pet.

Last week I realized I don't miss him any more. I guess it goes both ways, now.

It's the end of January, a month gone too fast. I'm afraid I've done nothing memorable. Scholarship applications make me feel like I've never done anything memorable.

But I've practiced my bass every day of the new year, so far. So maybe that's worth something.

in the afternoon

My six year-old sister and her best friend are in our backyard, sledding together down the thin scrim of muddy snow. She has a hat with a cat on it. Her friend's has an owl. I can watch them through the kitchen window, and hear the giggling and high-spirited shouts. They start at the top of our hill, one in front and one behind, and they blaze off into the wood line together. I wonder if they'll remember this later, years from now. If they'll remember their happiness. I wonder if I will.

snow day

the green eye

The sky glows gold in a strip over the tops of the houses, weighed down by the bruise-blue clouds above. The cat is in my chair, asleep with his eyes open.
Yesterday morning, my best friend texted me a verse of poetry. From the middle of the snow-dusted woods, I sent him back a verse of my own.
[I'm adept with syntax, but can't seem to say the necessary thing.]
The silence on my end of the phone line looks like an ocean, deep and troubling and still unknown. I keep too many secrets. They hold me mute when I ought to speak up.
And now I'm laying on the floor, legs against the wall and feet reaching for the ceiling while the single green eye of the smoke alarm stares down at me in judgment.
I'm trying to be a better person (a better friend). Last spring I let things fall and some of them cracked in the drop. I'm trying to pick them up, trying to repair what I've broken.
I want my friends to know how much I love them
 but in the dark I'm afraid (too afraid) that it's something they don't want to hear.

And so I keep fighting.

scattered

It's raining outside.
I'm trying not to panic over the last of my winter break.
Trying to work out an ending to the comic I'm writing.
I planted new seeds yesterday. Marigolds.
I haven't read as many books as I wanted to. (The book I'm reading now is four days overdue.)
I'm knitting a scarf of cloudlike fluffiness.
Playlisting.
Making phone calls.
Taking photos again.
I've made a list of things I haven't tried yet. I'm planning to try them all.