Detail from a building on the running path I made the first summer. Am waiting to run by it again, a regular appointment. This will be the third spring when I remember spring is blustery and cold, alternately gray and bright as the clouds wash through it in a big hurry, and it says it will rain but it doesn't or that it will hit 53 but feels 41 in the wind and then the sun comes out and warms the square by the dining room table for five or six minutes and I feel astonished by so much light. I look for light all day. Why put on two pairs of socks before bed when you didn't all winter? Not yet buds or flowers--too soon--and though the birds are back and the soil has thawed, it is only to deceive the likes of me: why am I so cold?
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Bottom, center: the dot of light in this dark window is another window on the other side. It is shaped like a T, is maybe a Trick. I'm unable to find the other side.
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1 am: woke to more screaming from upstairs and the inconsolable baby crying his lungs out. Sounds of falling, drunken falling I think. It went on for more than an hour. I don't call the police this time. This is hurting me. I am getting used to it.
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Back door, unlocked and wide open, banging inside the screen with the wind.
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As well as the categorical and the hierarchical. Just how terrible is it? Well, yellow, currently. But we've lived with that level of insecurity for awhile. We're getting used to it.
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"It was pleasing to them to consider, that the fangs of this wild beast, the very idea of which inspired trepidation into the boldest hearts, might be played with by them with the utmost security" (Caleb Williams 77).
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Homesick because the desert is so predictable, that's why. Three hundred days of sunshine a year with the thunderstorms rolling in at 2 or 3 o'clock in the afternoon every July and August, count on it. Variation on a theme: few years back it snowed on Easter and all the people were in the street taking pictures of their kids trying to make snowballs out of slush.
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Spring for a reason, my student says. It's like birth. While I have no desire to be born again. Traumatizing enough the first and second Times around.
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(When he said sex isn't exciting unless you can strike a bit of terror into your partner the creepy part was everyone in the room knew he was a talking about himself and therefore feared to disagree.)
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Shaped like a T, sacrifice and redemption, more a T than an X once the body's head bowed on the neck and left the arms raised up. "It is finished." Emulated in worship, the traumatized body and the promise of resurrection: you need only get to the other side. That's the logic, anyway. That's the trick.
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And then it happens--just now--that I pull into the carport and find the back door propped open and a red truck I don't know, tailgate down. A few boxes, some trash bags in the truckbed, I notice, and out of habit nearly pull the door closed, nearly reach for my key to lock the door again. It is evening now, still light enough to see birds lift from the bare trees, but dark enough for street lights, and dark enough for the lamp with the red paper shade in the living room. Romulus and I listen to the ceiling. They're banging and scooting around up there with a purpose. I recognize it from last spring when they moved in. Eleven months. They're moving out.
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