I LIKE TO THINK OF THE TREE IN YOUR RHODE ISLAND YARD THAT BLOOMED AND WAS PRETTY

05/22/25

Somewhere between the toss and turn I remembered you, and so I jumped out of bed, put my floor-length robe on… draping down from the shoulders in soft, clean, solemn lines, flowing all the way down to brush the ground with quiet authority—but also like a mop that won’t step off my back. The temp is off. Made a coffee. The temp is on. Nothing is even wrong, but lately I’ve felt like a ghost haunting my own life… drifting from room to room, checking clocks that never seem to move. Morning mourning. Restlessness doesn’t ask permission. It creeps in… quiet as dust… swept by clinging robe… and settles into the folds of every moment. I pace the perimeter of things… of thought… of sleep… of whatever it is we do when we pretend we’re “coping.” It’s not ambition, and it’s not desire. It’s the sound of blood ticking in your ears when you’re lying still too long… when the body wants to run, but the world is a cul-de-sac. Everything is Virginia Beach ’87. So we scroll, scratch, rearrange the kitchen knives.