a chernobyl survivor described the light from the ruined reactor as a sunset lasting two days.

here the radio crackles and hums with talk of evacuation zones and potassium iodide. i’m sitting here picking at my fingernails and refreshing news pages over and over to the faint scent of burning plastic, drinking apple-raspberry-cranberry juice and staring at the wilted roses that they were giving away at the grocery store some indeterminate amount of time ago. 

my days are made up of highway lines and roadmaps, but i’m stuck in a loop, like vestiges of bathwater circling a drain.  midwest, northeast, mid-atlantic.  round and round and round.  the days are warmer and there are some things that i would like to get closure on but for now, all is in flux.

the cards have yet to fall, the hand is still yet to be revealed. schrodinger’s timeline- the coming course is uncertain.

if only i could stand blinking in the sunlight and beat out my illusions like dust from a rug.

the nights are still cold and clear, but the light of the stars is poisoned by the absence i still feel so acutely. 

i think of the days that i would sit on the backyard porch smelling dirt and rain and something i don’t think i’ll ever be able to adequately convey.  i’d be sitting there, hair long and blonde and tucked behind an ear, playing with paints, using one of those little glass cups from the kitchen, the ones that seemed designed to hold either cat’s milk or dirty paint water, for what other use could they have? 

anyways, you know, when i was tired of using one color and wanted to switch i’d dip the paintbrush in that water and watch the color seep in and gradually spread, robbing the water of its clear, clean, untouched qualities- it’s like that.  except the water cup is my mind and- ah, but the important part is that i must constantly reassess and carry this to its conclusion.

in my dream last night i managed to convince a crazed murderer that he shouldn’t kill me because I was the only one who accepted him for who he was.

that was pretty considerate of me, i guess.