January 19th, 2014

You will not always be a teacher Kelly says. And it will not always be winter.
Yes. This is true. But it is hard to carry such a truth when the days are slivers
of their former selves and I have gained 15 pounds of winter weight and it's
only the middle of January and my bed is always too far away. He says: Remember
the woods you lived in alone for a day and night? Remember the trees and the very
old sadness that was not your own but belonged to the dirt of that place? Remember
the ache and groan you heard in the scratching of the branches and the running
of the brook? Remember the sunset you watched as a girl from Yellow Mountain
with Julia and how you had to walk along a two-foot ledge in the growing dark
to get home? Remember how you cupped running water to your lips and drank
in the rain even though it was downstream? Yes. I do.Where was I then? You were
there, as you are now. Then what do you doubt? I doubt the minutes and miles
between then and now and now and eventuality. He says: I am the God of the
space between things. When you look back, look back only to find My face.



January 18th, 2014

The air in my room is cold and I have spilled candle wax on my pillow.
This is the kind of cold that shakes me down to my sinews. And in the still
of night and cold and tangled blankets, in the quiet of the full moon and the
orange lights from the street that never turn off, I dream things I don't understand.
A woman falls into the frozen river and when I bend to pull her out by her hair,
her head, sunken in and blue, comes off of her body and I lift it in horror. It is too
late. I turn back to look at her lover who stands behind me, his mouth open and
his breath freezing on his lips. I'm sorry I couldn't save her I want to say. I'm sorry
this has happened I want to say. Oh well I tried is what I do say. My grandfather
is angry or disoriented and I'm not sure what to say to get him to calm so I say
nothing and push past him into the family house. The room I am to stay in has a
missing panel where the wall meets the floor and the dark opens into a crawl space
in which a demon who looks like a baby angrily paces on all fours. I roll my eyes
because I have already killed this monster a thousand times. But I'll do it again.