rejectomorph | Reset Forty-Nine, Day One Hundred Thirty

Early Saturday morning I lay awake in bed listening to no rain, and didn't get to sleep until after dawn. Then I slept until late afternoon, and pale sun penetrating the thin overcast that had replaced the clouds. Later I heard raindrops again, and realized that I hadn't gone out to check my mailbox. Now wanting any mail I might have to get wet in the inadequate box, I went out to check it in the growing shower and got wet myself. No mail was harmed though, AS there turned out to be none. Still, I'm glad I went out because it reminded me of how much I used to enjoy getting wet with rain.

But my tooth(s) was/were acting up, so I didn't fix any dinner. One good thing about not having diner is that I don't bite myself. My teeth have been biting me so much lately that I barely have time to heal between bites. I'm pretty sure my teeth hate me as much as I have come to hate them. This makes skipping meals seem like a small but significant victory in this war. Ultimately I will win the war, as when I die so will my teeth, but it will be a pyrrhic victory, as, being dead, I won't be able to gloat.

After a time I took some more anti-inflammatory medication and went back to bed, and slept a good, long time again. My tooth(s) had quieted down so I fixed dinner about four o'clock this morning, and so far no big deal. But for some reason I'm tired but not sleepy. I should go lie in bed again anyway, like I did yesterday. Eventually I will fall asleep. Meanwhile:

Sunday Verse

A Summer

by Carl Phillips

The latest once-more-with-feeling-please
manifestation of letting go, cadence of wings
folding, unfolding, nights at the pier, nights

beneath it, boat-rower, finder of lost things,
bodies at sea, the body as itself a sea,
crossed wherever crossable, makes me feel

so much better about my self makes me
feel good, as by arrangement, as of arms
and legs, as for an altarpiece in the sand,

ritual resting as much in the details, careful,
easy, as in what we make of them, the eye, if
faltering, not failing quite, X for speak no more,

for love also, also his mark, you’ll forget me
only when I say you can, a rosewater X at
each wrist in the style of rope-work, restraint,

release from it, slavery is dead, everyone
saying so, singing it, believing it, let them –
a lovely rumor. Then summer was over.