52/21-22: Rainy Again
Feb. 2nd, 2025 07:01 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
rejectomorphSaturday appears to have been Groundhog Day, or is that today? Mostly I slept on Saturday, most of the morning and then all the late afternoon and evening until past midnight. I expect I'll do much the same today. Well, some of Saturday's was just brain hamster wheeling, but enough was actual sleeping, which was probably for the best. It kept my pathetic, self-absorbed arse from getting trapped in a time loop. It would have been a bad day to get caught in a time loop, as I felt mostly crappy whenever I was awake, but then there would have been the compensation that it rained the entire time I was awake too. If I'm going to feel crappy I'd rather it was on a rainy day. It keeps the glare down. It will be rainy today as well, for which I am grateful.
Now I've just finished fixing and eating Saturday's dinner, which was nice, but (there's always a damned but) I let the air get filled with smoke while I was frying something, and now it's hard to breathe. I can't open windows to air the place out either, because it's still cold and rainy. Plus my nose has gotten runny. What the hell is that about? At the moment all I really want to do is get back to bed and sleep some more, but suffocation makes sleep difficult. Being muddleheaded doesn't. The suffocation and muddle-headedness can just fight it out. I wish they could leave me out of it, but I'm sort of what they'll be fighting about, so they probably can't. Too bad. I could use a good obliviousness.
Sunday Verse
by Kim Addonizio
On winter nights, the dead
see their photographs slipped
from the windows of wallets,
their letters stuffed in a box
with the clothes for Goodwill.
No one remembers their jokes,
their nervous habits, their dread
of enclosed places.
In these nightmares, the dead feel
the soft nub of the eraser
lightening their bones. They wake up
in a panic, go for a glass of milk
and see the moon, the fresh snow,
the stripped trees.
Maybe they fix a turkey sandwich,
or watch the patterns on the TV.
It's all a dream anyway.
In a few months
they'll turn the clocks ahead,
and when they sleep they'll know the living
are grieving for them, unbearably lonely
and indifferent to beauty. On these nights
the dead feel better. They rise
in the morning, and when the cut
flowers are laid before their names
they smile like shy brides. Thank you,
thank you, they say. You shouldn't have,
they say, but very softly, so it sounds
like the wind, like nothing human.
Now I've just finished fixing and eating Saturday's dinner, which was nice, but (there's always a damned but) I let the air get filled with smoke while I was frying something, and now it's hard to breathe. I can't open windows to air the place out either, because it's still cold and rainy. Plus my nose has gotten runny. What the hell is that about? At the moment all I really want to do is get back to bed and sleep some more, but suffocation makes sleep difficult. Being muddleheaded doesn't. The suffocation and muddle-headedness can just fight it out. I wish they could leave me out of it, but I'm sort of what they'll be fighting about, so they probably can't. Too bad. I could use a good obliviousness.
Sunday Verse
What the Dead Fear
by Kim Addonizio
On winter nights, the dead
see their photographs slipped
from the windows of wallets,
their letters stuffed in a box
with the clothes for Goodwill.
No one remembers their jokes,
their nervous habits, their dread
of enclosed places.
In these nightmares, the dead feel
the soft nub of the eraser
lightening their bones. They wake up
in a panic, go for a glass of milk
and see the moon, the fresh snow,
the stripped trees.
Maybe they fix a turkey sandwich,
or watch the patterns on the TV.
It's all a dream anyway.
In a few months
they'll turn the clocks ahead,
and when they sleep they'll know the living
are grieving for them, unbearably lonely
and indifferent to beauty. On these nights
the dead feel better. They rise
in the morning, and when the cut
flowers are laid before their names
they smile like shy brides. Thank you,
thank you, they say. You shouldn't have,
they say, but very softly, so it sounds
like the wind, like nothing human.
