Don't call back.

I am drinking coffee at 2 p.m.  I should be leaving now but I can't quite make it happen. There are only two weeks of school left, but they seem insurmountable. None of the places I call "home" are home. I'm a migratory bird and winter is biting.

He hung up the phone first last night, and I got that sudden hollow feeling again. It's been gone for so long. Somehow, it's still as familiar as the whistle your dog returns to.

I'm going to grow my hair longer than it's ever been. I'll become Samson in rainbow hues. I need strength to back up this cornered feeling: this fierceness arisen.

The words don't bubble like they used to. The thoughts are short and shadowed. Because they're ugly, I don't express them. I dress silence in smiles.

Two weeks.

(I'm not sure how to end this. Except that the coffee doesn't help the sadness. Things have been hard recently. I don't want to lie about it. But things will get better. I know it. I wait for it.)

to-do list for November

• get another piercing
• eat a doughnut
• wear cool jackets
• take care

poem for a clouded Tuesday

Unable to sleep, or pray, I stand
by the window looking out
at moonstruck trees a December storm
has bowed with ice.

Maple and mountain ash bend
under its glassy weight,
their cracked branches falling upon
the frozen snow.

The trees themselves, as in winters past,
will survive their burdening,
broken thrive. And am I less to You,
my God, than they?

—Ice Storm by Robert Hayden