πpm
Tuesday
7 March 2006

I would like to watch you sleeping,
which may not happen.
I would like to watch you,
sleeping. I would like to sleep
with you, to enter
your sleep as its smooth dark wave
slides over my head

and walk with you through that lucent
wavering forest of bluegreen leaves
with its watery sun & three moons
towards the cave where you must descend,
towards your worst fear

I would like to give you the silver
branch, the small white flower, the one
word that will protect you
from the grief at the center
of your dream, from the grief
at the center. I would like to follow
you up the long stairway
again & become
the boat that would row you back

carefully, a flame
in two cupped hands
to where your body lies
beside me, and you enter
it as easily as breathing in

I would like to be the air
that inhabits you for a moment
only. I would like to be that unnoticed
& that necessary.

—Margaret Atwood, Variations on the Word Sleep

Does my lack of day-to-day recounting indicate a lack of ability for narrative? It may. I shirk the details because I deem them boring, but I worry that without anything to ground my writing, it becomes a flouncy wisp of melodramatic emotionalism, and not much better than the 14-year-old on deadjournal elaborating upon her breakfast.

I had a pumpkin pound cake muffin, lots of water, flash driver code I wrote last summer.

• × • × • × •

marilyn@orcus:~$ cat .bash_history | grep dict
    dict skullduggery
    dict drupe
    dict indehiscent
    dict mythopoeic
    dict talion
    dict picaresque
    dict burgeon
    dict soporific
    dict ur-test
    dict urtext
    dict scurf

• × • × • × •

I think that's all I got. Everything feels a little too ephemeral today.

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