lol...and you are? tell me if we've met someplace, sometime and in what fashion or mode. (my questions to jeff asking him to dig deep.)

I am happy today. Honey, the brown one who hates peeing in the rain, decided it was a good day to attack the snow. She's young and never known the cold. I smiled broadly, laughing, looking through muddy pawed windows while H was in the kitchen making coffee, making breakfast. I heard Rox talking to him in a little girl voice. She's cute, I like her. I like Bri too. The other one I have yet to meet. Lots to do, busy work and painting. Songs for Jarrod. I'm feeling poetic today, good day to listen to Mazy Starr and Cowboy Junkies, sway from side to side and sing in hushed tones. Fold the laundry while the sky is gray and the snow still falls.

Ry, thank you for your words, they struck me in kindred spirit. Others have tried but I find their "voice" trite in harsh falsetto. I've marked your page and mark my words, I'll come back to it. People like us are hard to find. Don't talk so much about school, honey, it's unimportant in the scheme of things. Let your emotions bleed through. Your note to me, it's those words that speak:

"I connect with the second half of this more and therefor I like it more. I have always found myself crushing and without focus.. lost somewhere in dreamy dazing of another's skin. Its so sensual. You remind me of the Hemingway i wrote today in some ways. Goin from monotonous and hurtful grays to vibrance and luster. Wonderful emotions..."

Beautifully they touched me.

When did this all become so autobiographical? I can't say. Maybe I finally started to bleed through, own up to my emotions, you know, those that manifest in my writing, the ones I don't see until it's too late. I'm learning to feel them and articulate.

My heart. I put it up in a jar on my desk at work. A jar labeled Mt. Olive, Dill Pickles. I made a little slit in the top with a knife where I deposit notes from time to time. Notes and loose change. It'll keep there for a while, my heart. I put it up safe, those specific hopes with it. You know, J, all those ones shot to hell over too much thinking. I'll come back to it, to them at a later time. For now, I am content with nothing from no one. I am content being me and letting time spill around me.

I sit on that warm beach on Vieques, the sand cold and wet on sun kissed skin. I lean back on stretched arms and look to the sky, the tide ebbs and flows around me. It is the beach I gave you in your dying days. Your soft step draws me from the sun and I turn. Walking towards me in silence, arm raised in greeting, you smile. No, you will not age, Robert, you will forever be that youth, smiling and carefree. That youth of my summer before the world turned. Not even thirty-five, you'll be that nineteen to my sixteen. In our separate paths we made it to a similar destination. We did not judge each other, we did not know each other well enough and yet that bond existed. You were you and I was me and we finally loved ourselves feely enough to love each other. I miss you, two years is coming up fast.

Time moves that desperate ache toward fond memories and bitter-sweet smiles, and fades anger from black to gray. Time moves within my womb, within my heart, slowing, stilling. I have to get through before I can get past and though the pasture is wide, I see the gate that opens to the next field.

Darkness weeps in slow descent of light. My mind wanders never resting on the fullness of thought, never wanting the form to disclose itself fully. Shadows ebb and flow, smooth and deep. I dream in shades of gray and searing pain behind blinded eyes. Quiet deafening as the pressure builds. This too will pass.

And the roses are beautiful, full blooming with delicate scent and curves of grace, soft like last summers skin so opulent I found in the deep red crush called my heart’s desire. Skin I ran my fingers across gently, longingly in bliss. Skin I dream of still. This one is different, but just the same, it is friendship unassuming found in strange places in strange ways.

This morning.
Goddamn the coffee smells good. Puppies are playing outside making growly snarly play sounds. Rough and tough, their tails wag happy. My breasts are full sore tight and no one will see or notice. I love my secrets they are simple. Today I need to paint and rewrite my resume and crunch some numbers for work. I promise myself...next weekend I'll wallow naked in the sheets for hours trying to articulate all my writing, trying to form the next sentence for each story. And I'll write those songs.

Last night.
I am free and falling, arms wide into the abyss in which I leapt eyes wide. And the wind rushes past while all the world's asleep. Wonder, glory. I close my eyes and breathe deep and deeper still. My heart beats fast, betrayed by the cards with someday and probabilities and my womb is restless in wait, heavy with my heart’s understanding of the fragility of life and the knowing that all too soon it can pass in the blink of an eye. I am perseverance as I always have been and always will be. I hold within me the strength of unimaginable depths. I am me, just me and nothing else. Always, I think of you and smile.

Yesterday morning.
Renewal. I never mind the beginning of a cycle. I am tired, but my breasts are fuller, tender and my body reminds me – someday my womb will stretch and my breasts will grow heavy with milk. A dark little line will form from pubic to navel. I will conceive beautifully, softly. I will weep from it. Someday. No not soon. And the tarot betrays me, tells things. That the best I can do right now is stand still and breath deeply. She tells me I am strong like no other and that ground zero will form into probabilities not possibilities or denial of hope. She twists the knife with her insight and I weep, confusion overwhelms me.