Recessional

Silver is still my favorite crayon
Treeful of Starling is still my favorite album ( today)
Alfed Stieglitz's portraits of Georgia O'Keefe and her hands are still some of my favorite photographs. ( I have three of them, postcard form, on the wall in front of my desk)
Weeping Willows are still my favorite trees (if I have to pick a favorite)

I talked to people today. Well, spoke to one on the telephone, long distance, all the way to the island, phone lines flickering and sparking words that will be passed through them in following months. Wrote to another, received a reply.

I'm sitting at the computer, listening to "You and the Candles", turning the silver crayon in my hands ( from Frances' box of 96 that I've claimed and now decorate my desk haphazardly), and periodically watching the leaves blown about by the wind outside the window. I'm lucky, I can see more trees that houses from this angle, and no road at all, if the curtain is placed well.

I found out that a friend of mine is having a gallery showing of a few of her paintings soon, and I'm actually in a couple of them. I've never been "officially" in a gallery before.

I spoke to another friend on the phone. She is blue today. I am too. Nothing new for me.

Productivity is low
sentences dense and unassuming
I covered myself with leaves but the wind still found me
glue unstuck and hinges pulled clear from their placements

tactile wishers
vicious listeners
tacking sticky tape behind our ears
to make the worst sounds cling
when we swallow our words unhindered
and spit up the balance our inner ears would supply

my bones are dry
the shape of a jaw with history imprinted
loosens its teeth to lose a story
and I leave my own fingernail marks on my skin
to remind myself that I'm here

a depth of breath
an impossibility of conveyance
put my right palm flat against my chest
to test for life
collapsible and longing for a clear exhalation
an exhortation of happiness forgiven

my passage long paid off
recessions envisioned and grown malleable, too slight
distance me from nerve to sensation
draw away and maybe I'll search for my features
in unknown rivers split by leaning stones

all ground has lost my traces
withdraw to begin again
heels first this time.