We are in the midst of dog days and it is slow and lazy despite the weather's being fine. I have a hard time accomplishing. I am often tired and as soon as I resolve myself to a task, my brain goes soft and my muscles seem to dangle from my bones in loose wavings, wrapped like broken fishing wire on a tree branch, the cork of my best intention hanging impotent a few inches above the water.
I have an anger about me too; a secret anger that goes unspoken even to my conscious mind, but comes out in dreams. I find myself waking at four or five in the morning, racing with a furious heartbreak, unable to go back to sleep. Abandoned, I sit on the front porch in the dark, looking at the rare headlights that appear on my street as morning slowly turns itself on. I would like to whisper this anger into an old cigar box and keep it closed until such time as it may be useful, rather than this dreamy series of sneak attacks every lonesome pre-dawn.
There's a lttle yellow bird I see everywhere I turn lately, far off. I've learned to recognize its flight pattern, its canary flash across the sky from wire to wire, tree to tree, and I imagine that same yellow bird and its ancestors and descendents have been watching me for years. My whole life, even.
When I'm tired and my brain has gone to mush so that I can't even read, I wonder if I am so exhausted simply by the grace of being me, that maybe I am tired because I am forced into constant contact with myself, every minute of every day, and that I am a particularly tiring person to to be around.
And I wonder if I have, step by step, beenbacking myself into a tight spot, a corner, and that one day, some day, my only means of escape will be reckless flight, either spiritually or physically.
