I'm waiting for the night to take us, I'm waiting for the night to break us, I'm waiting for the night to save us

Not a lot of posts for March, huh?

This time last year I was entering into a vulnerable, wonderful, weird, hard, transformative time where I learned how to be wrong in a good way. I had to revisit a few narratives and realize that maybe they weren't all the stories I'd told myself. It was entirely unexpected, the way that life is sometimes, and the way that sometimes can save you.

I don't know what it is that I'm learning this year, but I'm trying to keep an open heart, and not freak out, which I guess is the best anyone can do.

one time you were a glowing young ruffian, oh my god it was a million years ago

I fix myself a strawberry cocktail tonight: fresh strawberries, rose wine, and prosecco. It's supposed to have simple syrup in it as well, but I want it tart and bright. The berries are intense, sharply fragrant, and the coolness of the evening feel good on my cheek that are flushed from my run, workout, then the steam rooms afterward.

Migraine raw: all a thousand pieces of the glass of myself, and just in time for Monday. Today at work, my casual work friend asks about my weekend, and I can tell my own transparency and vulnerability spilling through as I tell her my small disappointments and the things that scared me. She says, "ohhh Jess" in sympathy before I'm finished, and I half-love her for just using my name.

I'm susceptible and aware of the fact, aware of my own dubious breeding and maturity, too. She's one of those nice Cville sorts born and raised there, and she possesses that easy, graceful command of her own attention. The gift of the effervescent Right Word, delivered with perfect kindness and yet structured distance. I'm not complaining at all. I would never be anything but admiring of the whole suite of qualities. (At least in the great score of my flaws, the pathetic trap that is to be jealous of another woman's skills or beauty has never entered in.) But I see it, and it makes me feel absurdly grateful and lonely both.

*

Yesterday, feeling glum and fractured and finally able to drive, I went out and bought myself a dumbass dress. It's less of a dress and more of a trifle or a confectionery. It's white with flowers and a deep, long skirt that cuts down in a series of tiers down my long legs, cut tight at the waist. I feel like I was only still returning to my body from some fog when I bought it, which means it probably won't look ridiculous on me at all.

Afternoon for deletion and Adrienne  Rich. Impossibly, the title is Walking in the Dark.

can I get a minute of not being nervous, and not thinking of my dick

Energy, suddenly dropping weight though my workout routine is fairly the same, intermittent unexpected crying, and five straight days of sex dreams means that maybe it is finally getting to be spring, even if the weather is determined to say otherwise. My body feels like it's moving the same way as the plants unfolding under the dead leaves in my garden, same as the birds that are suddenly everywhere and looking to fuck. 

The first camping trip of the year, and it reminded me of the snow camp back in 2016, the way everything was so tentative and bruised out there, but packed with potency. There was a crow's nest in one of the great, dying pine trees in our site. The water was clear, up, and so cold. I felt empty headed for most of the time, walking alone or with my boys, feeling out my body. Windstorms had knocked down a lot of deadfall. Something about it felt so accommodating.

*

Today, I was easy. I unpacked; I moved my possessions unproductively around my house. I called my mom and she wanted to talk about whether I thought the souls of dogs endured on, or were destroyed upon their death. I told her that there wasn't any way God would spend all this time creating something so designed for relationship with an immortal being, and then throw it away, and besides, it'd be inefficient to populate the afterlife with a whole new set of created animals. I couldn't tell her how much comfort I take in the opposite idea: this deep affection for dissolution, the idea that at the moment of my death all of my dreams, deepest, secret little hopes, funniness, talent, cruelty, soft jealousies, deep loves, stupid stories, fingernails, eye crinkles will perfectly un-exist and be quiet and complete. But you can't say that to your mom.

I called my grandmother, too, and then went downtown to pick up some eggs from Mary. I bought myself a cappuccino, which I loved. I tried to garden afterward, but I kept having to cross to the sunlight parts of the yard.

I don't know if it will snow, but I hope it does.