Another January

Grass isn't growing under my feet; it is winter.

My days are easy, nothing changes. The sleepy office. The light pours through the glass walls all morning. Feed the fish. Answer phones. Sort the mail. Make the coffee. Clean the coffee pot at the end of each day.

Hours slouch by in lazy increments, measured in rounds of PopCap computer games. At 4 o'clock I walk 2 blocks home, aggressive evening filling my footprints.

He is at home; the apartment is warm because of him. And because our landlord pays for the oil. lift some weights. Hot running water. Cuddle on the couch, then wash dishes, then make dinner. When she comes home we eat together. Then shopping, then laundry. Doctor Appointments and Stopping By Mom's.The daily details of Our Life Together. TV shows and videos and video games, until we can't sleep, or else bedtime and nightmares, and ghosts from the past. old pain like brown stains in the hardwood. Under the rugs, you know they're still there.

It is those old marks on the heart still pulling on me. My feet itch. My thoughts buzz like a broken radio that keeps flipping stations.

Gypsy blood. The kind that ignites if kept still for too long.

The road as I am walking home pulls me; true north to a needle. I wish the frozen ponds were roaming oceans. The train whistle is a fish-hook in my heart. Names that I love are too thick across my tongue. They want homes and houses and feel safe inside the word “Stay.”

“Stay” is a noose getting tight around my neck. A Better Life is the hangman. The outlaw in me wants Dillinger days. A few more before I start swinging.

The sky outside threatens weather. A Winter Storm.

I want to walk home tonight in the snow. To look up at the white swirling down.

I want to turn my face to the black behind the white and fall up into it, away from the earth and everything.