sounding off

The humidifier is on and rain sounds are playing softly on my phone. Artificial audioscape, soothe my nerves, thank you kindly.

A new week lurks and looms. Monday, ever watching. I am thinking of offering my time to a new task, volunteering myself for another opportunity. An opportunity to? Flounder, fail, achieve, or exceed? I suppose there are a hundred thousand gradients between each pole. And the living is in the pursuit of one, and horrifyingly, the sawtooth acceptance of falling short. Or happily realizing your potential. Slick and sly pride, sweaty relief. To what extent is potential merely willpower and less predestined limits? What has unchecked temporal adherence wrought? Daylight? Savings? Under whomst’s circumstances does pain imagined leech its potency? Am I abusing myself by ignoring the burn, the strain, the stretch, or healthily growing my self strong? Deny, and therefore, live?

I think about these questions when I look at my daughter sometimes, holding the whole of her personhood, motherhood’s muted agony. Once, we were one, and for months after the separation, she still couldn’t discern the difference. Age shrinks time and pain induces distance.

Describe it to me, sweetheart, you have to try. (To let me have it, you must name it. And you cannot know how much you can’t escape it, until you give it a name. Sorry.)

Because: sometimes it will hurt, and there is just nothing we can do about it. A rotten truth to repeat to a child. Who had no hand, that I am conscious of, in her making. Just bound to this earth and its warts. Out of a clear blue sky: live! Revel and suffer until your unmaking.

Coffee, sunshine, wheels crunching over loose gravel. A leaf caught in windshield wipers, dislodged by a breeze, gone. Ring of turquoise, powdered sugar, bright feather, sacred path. Squeaking sneakers against shiny gym floors, open palms beating out celebratory rhythms. Ace. Ace. Ace. Wins, losses, baby hairs, kitchens. I used white pepper and black pepper on the steak. Crawling traffic drench—thick, cake-throated rot; rage. Breathe. Swing it around and put it in park. I can’t remember the last time I made steak.

I’m tired and it isn’t even ten o’clock. Maybe the secret is just getting into bed and letting your body do the rest. Millions before me have had similar revelations. Are they all getting better sleep than me? What would I look like if I got all of the sleep I needed? POV you’re a single-celled organism on a dew-dappled leaf. A speck of dust on the eyelash of a tortoise. An undisturbed valley shadow, darkening anything but itself. Hidden enough. Not at all dead but utterly at rest. The sleep within me that can’t be slept.

I need to:

Change the sheets

Wash the couch

Sweep the dirt

Replace my dryer

Plan the week’s meals

Clear my altar

Disappear into mist

I want to:

Go to sleep

Go to New York

Read my books

Finish crocheting those socks

Take piano lessons

Be a midwife’s apprentice

Never email again

Eat something sweet

Moody dogs one unit below barking and growling, and blessedly, ridiculously, I’m alive with no choice but to hear them.