my downy fortress

The upright of morning finds me with a fault line just behind my eyes, the contour of which quakes with tremors ranging from faint to seismic.  Rest was elusive.  Left over in my foggy head are suspicions of the sneaky clock at my bedside: the games it plays when the lights go off.  My eyes are jet-puffed and oh thank goodness I bought cucumbers last week.

Night is more kind to my mister.  Rest wraps its heavy arms around him and leaves his breaths deep.  Even.  He sleeps at me and it feels like taunting.  I erect a downy fortress between us, hopeful that within her I’ll finally go blank.

i drift down a rabbit hole of angst, not shedding but absorbing

words that fit at the time ring back too sharp in my ears

betrayals assault every bit as much as a punch in the gut and hope of a future bright goes fluttering just out of reach

Dawn brings the crash crash woosh of the garbage truck, clamoring up our cul-de-sac with a vengeance.  I skip working out to instead run the car in for diagnostics.  If only we all could be hooked up for a tidy little printout of just what is misfiring…how to fix it.  And even after twenty full minutes of wandering room to room asking aloud sheesh, where is that football? Jayce still can’t find it.  I’m way past due for a haircut and the split of my ends have crept through my hair down into the roots and the heart of me.

Tucked into the tiny corner of the auto shop I sit elbow to elbow with an age-ed, perpetualy smiling man whose cane rests beside him.  Across from me there is a wilted old woman, her eyes defiantly bright.  Mindless on my iPhone, my own eyes droopy and still jet-puffed, no time for cucumber rounds.  What is this thing called tweeting? the man asks and I set the phone aside.

I tell him it’s when you only have a few characters–just a short phrase–to say something.  I s’pose that’s why they don’t want people doing it while they drive then, eh? And then he tells me and the woman his story of last week at the doctor there was a young grandmother and she was watching a movie on her little device and her toes were painted sparkly purple.  Twinkle toes, he thought.  I guess that’s how the new generation communicates.

Honest to Pete! the lady says and then stares at something over my head, lost in a memory maybe.

I slip the phone into my purse, unsure that where we’ve come to is an improvement over where we used to be.

{linking up for the first time ever with Just Write}