Got my favorite table in my favorite little writing coffee shop, back wall, full view of the room. It's been that kind of morning. My girls were out of bed fast and out the door on time. Teeth brushed, shoes on, breakfast in bellies, lunches in hand. Every light on the school commute was green. And I'm happy with my hair.

Sun through the high windows warm on my face, one beam straight to my table, coffee steaming. Buenas Dias.

Sitting here in Case Study, Americano on the table, computer on my lap - make myself at home - the way I've always done. I'm literal like that. It's not called a table top, this little machine of mine. My BFF. And anyway, you don't get the cozywarm legs if the computer isn't on your body. Personal space heater to counter all that fall coming in through the open cafe door.

Me, I'm the woman in the big purple headphones without the first clue what to write. I'll tell you a secret: my head is packed with sounds and thoughts and ideas, but these days every time my fingers get within three feet of the keys it's all poof, gone, right of the rails. Empty. It's empty up there. I got the music beyond the edges of my headphones, come and go traffic, a broom across the floor and the barista chatting up a guy at the counter.

Devices all around.

Out past the window, toddler unsteady stepping the sidewalk in the rain jacket both my girls wore at her age. Purple hearts up both yellow sleeves and butterflies taking up the front panel real estate. Lila was in that jacket back when we lived in one of the brick apartments across the street, whole of our lives crammed into 720 square feet. I could spin sentences all through the night, put breakfast on the table in the morning, drop them at preschool and make newspaper stories until pickup.

Back before Facebook.

The leaves have dropped and budded and spread their colors and shed their colors, again and again and again. My girls have long legs to carry them steady now.

And I'm still here.

Got a story for you, but not the first fucking clue what it is.

Stick around. I swear, I'll find it.

I offered up my goods to the devil or the gods or the universe

Whatever bigger than everything entity has the power to make such backroom bargains

I said tell you what

Give me 9 to 5 with bennies and a 401k
one thing I can hold onto

And, perhaps, a little something extra for a weekend at the beach 

Anything, I said, anything will do.

smite me to a cubicle life
of gray office damnation

I said you can have whatever you want,

you can have this. These,

all my words, take them

every letter, sound and syllable
yours for the low, low price of one eternity in stability

I said please.

Motherfucker, please.

They're yours all yours, I said
I don’t want them anymore,

pulled my fingers from the keys and waited.

Weighted

the leaves turned orange and gold and brown,

the rains painted their colors across the sidewalk,

and washed them into oblivion

days got shorter and the days got longer and the flowers opened and

fat red tomatoes split guts and seeds onto the garden floor

and nothing
Turns out the devil don't need writers neither

writing just makes me tired these days. all the work of organizing thoughts into sentences, I'd rather just lay down my head, let the words scatter out over my dreams and piece it back together in the morning.

5:02 a.m. I'm up before the anxiety. Light in the sky, but not enough put color into day yet. Just a few birds calling out their good mornings and I've already been in and out of the shower, thrown a load into the wash. Dog curled nose under paw and tail wrapped around, not quite snoring, beside me. All quiet from the bedrooms. Until I type all quite from the bedrooms and then, right on cue with the keystroke, a rolling over kind of sigh. Roxie narrates the night just like me. Talks out loud all through her dreams, but mostly just the bad ones. Lila's a quiet sleeper. Snugs her self in and once she drops off she barely moves again. These early morning birds are my favorite. Connection to the outside.With the high laural and the fence and no front of the house it's hard for the outside to make it's way into the place. Isolation. Makes it hard to hear myself.

Between Want and Waiting

I had a moment of inspiration a moment ago but I lost it to the Facebook. Not  Facebook exactly. To the restless grey not-my-holiday-anymore Christmas. Not restless exactly. Not unless I stop to think about it. Me on my orange couch in the back of someone else's house, no tree, no decorations, back to a lifetime of Christmas as it always was, Christlmasless, but not as it is for my kids. Daisy curled beside the couch and the holly outside my window swaying with the rain.

This is Yule.
Quiet in all ways.

Last night the annual Christmas-eve tree decorating party. Longest standing tradition my girls have known in a life where nothing stands for long, and the first real hours I've spent inside the old place since I jumped that ship four months back. All those rooms I put together. Shelves I painted and painted again. My furniture. My table. My spider plants hanging down over the mantle.

All this morning I read.  The rain comes down and down.. Granta, Marie Claire, the CareOregon provider directory. Pandora busts up the quiet with Schuman and Chopin and I peek in on your holiday while my neighbor vacuums upstairs.

The rabbit cage smells all the way into the living room.
I owe my dog a walk.

Caught between want and waiting. Folded up around myself in Roxie's bean bag at the dead end of my house.The phone gives me quick facebook hits of Christmas around the world, or at least around the constellation of my world. Soak up a little satisfaction (or something like it) from the joy pushing out of those stills. Picture of  the world just how we want to see it.

It's not there, what I'm looking for. And it's not here either. It's dripping down off the bamboo outside my window, inside my mirror. Sometime this morning, early, I lay myself down on the floor. Keep that knot tied up inside my throat when I'm talking to my girls. Let it slide apart in streams when the phone goes quiet. Alone is just a song we sing ourselves anyway. By myself is how I chose today.

Something's in this quiet.
Gently used gift  I'll force myself to find.
Sit here in it and in it and in it until I can unwrap.