Begged, Borrowed, & Stole’d

The wind is so soft here slips around my knees and calves while crickets talk across the dark and windchimes carefully interject

I feel so much love for myself and the world around me than I have in such a long time

It feels unfair and unreal and deliciously selfish

It was stupid. Coffee after 5 And I laid here while my eyeballs buzzed staring at memory frames and occasionally smiling across your face, even though Krista’s blood dripped and the Bronze Fonze had lockjaw a cabinetless drawer sleeps in its wall below your space graffiti and my eyes buzz, sore and dry.

The wrath of the radiator fairy is worst at night or while I’m folding laundry.

My pillow’s alter ego offers no reprieve, nor does New York light. Buzzing eyes call for socket ice, but cubes are not balls and I’m prone to brain freeze.

I’ll wait out the sunlight this room never sees.

Papermarking is the antithesis of darkroom printing

Hands in the bath, milling and mulling

Seeking spots

Feeling fineness

Wet chemistry and physics

Time precisely felt, bathed in the orange warmth

Bright sun of the yard yearning for the dark drip of the curtained trays

Satisfaction of drowned hands

Finally, scan the pull, scrutinize the grain and weight And hang to dry

The geese say it will be alright.

Gossip in soft mouth-tea air cooling of year’s decline ambient sounds slow down, trains mowers cicadas replaced with pop pop pop walnuts hurtling to mulch

Ladybug coworks inspecting the hymnals and sketchbooks quietude of back to school and night-before chaos life uncertain and volatile, ever ready to crash, but the geese say it will be alright.

When I tell you that I stole a kiln, you imagine a heist. Jazzy music in the night of black catsuits and balaclavas, sneaking through laser alarms with a get-away car ready to haul a prized tomb away, thrilling and sexy.

Though the movie adaptation is exciting the original book shows a young crying woman in fast fashion Furious at her boss for being so out of touch with reality that she picked up an object that no other employees knew about from a space no other employees visited And carried it to her decrepit car am I moving too? sun shift shadows d r i f t wax & wane watch shiftlet passing by/over exhausted hive home to build out of itself

So that every time she fires it up she can think “Fuck you, Pamela”. And feel like she’s won something.

Cut away and yet Phantom limbs running into those I used to know Inquiring, inquiring shame or resignation welling into objectification of the past Positive

Ly sure that I am directionless but enthusiastic I am moving perhaps Obliquely forward

She is a vibrant embarrassment

The epitome of the church ladies’, “Lord, bless her heart”

Seven ceramic mugs rolling around on the passenger side floor of her SUV because she either can’t keep track of a travel cup lid for more than two goddamn weeks or because she can’t think far enough ahead to not pour the hot water and tea bag into something sensible

A cackling laugh, rare jungle bird in libraries, polite parties, crowded restaurants, sermons and recitals

Paint stains on the stupid overalls that she insists are good for all occasions, especially the floral pair

Rattling resume of incongruous roles, positions with short lifespan but long duties and ‘accomplishments’

Folds her offering money into origami goats to the chagrin of the deacons, “Well guess who showed up to service today”

Recognized in certain circles, perhaps for the worse And

(mostly from scraps) watching a lunar eclipse in Wisconsin in May in 2022.

I have ~$400 in my bank account and ~$3000 in credit card debit with rent unpaid

(Thank gods I’m sleeping with my landlord)* and need to buy a few groceries tomorrow (one recipe calls for broccoli and one for cabbage, I haven’t decided yet)

And I am trying to train myself to say “self-employed” instead of “unemployed” (it has been almost two months since my job left me and I started drawing out of desiderium/ineffability)

But that all seems so small And unnecessary*

As I listen to neighborhood wind chimes in the barely blowing breeze

The white noise of freeway a mile west And enjoy the lilac and ornamental crabapple smells (mixed with that incense stick I found in the garden closet)

And I marvel

How all of these things

Came together

Just so

*My partner of 10 years bought a house and lets me live there because it makes him happy. I am (poorly) tracking the rent I owe him.

*something about my immense and only partially comprehended privilege as a white woman in the Midwest