Thursday 12/22/2011
All the carefully ordered placement of yesterday has been overlaid by a new layer of boxes, furniture, packing materials. And a layer of dust that traveled with M’s furniture from the old house to the new. Waking up this morning with ultimatums in my mind, afraid to come downstairs…
Dot dot dot. And here we are among our boxes and our stuff and our dust and our detritus and our dreams and fantasies and emotions and sometimes we sit and stare at one another with forlorn expressions, and sometimes one or the other of us is mad or frustrated, and often we stop to hug one another. And last night at ten-oh-something I said to M “come to bed” because I could see that his brain was beginning to wind down like a giant clockwork or a music box, just tut-tut-tut-ing. And he did, and I rubbed his front and I rubbed his arms and legs and back and he was happy and we fell asleep.
This morning, a burst of pure hatred for clutter and disorder drove me to start unpacking the china barrel I’d filled with his kitchen’s contents the day before. He wisely ran away for a little while. I have boxes and boxes of books and papers and I don’t feel like resigning them to the great ash-heap of history. Already there’s so much I have given up and let go of.
And God will come with her lion claws and split open the rest of my dragon skin and turn me back into a girl.
tended by poet Frances Donovan
Garden of Words 