Six Days after Epiphany

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I am finding it impossible to write. To read. To do anything other than stare into the void (i.e., read the entire internet). I check out e-books, read a few pages, space out, watch tik toks, crochet ill-fitting hats, four scarves, run. There is a pain in my thigh, my shoulders hurt from doing handstands in the hallway, I used to do gymnastics, could walk on my hands, could cartwheel across the beam, hurl myself at the vault. I see my face in the mirror, lined, tired, thin and pale and tired. I already said that. I give up alcohol for January because I think it will help me sleep but I don't sleep, I wake because I'm grinding my teeth, because the olden dog is moaning, because it is 5 AM and the olden dog needs to go outside, wants breakfast, wants company. I gave up drinking for January also because there is still a part in my brain that says you'll lose weight this way that says any urge is a bad urge. To want to want anything is suspect, wrong. I put on a mask (the floor of my car is covered in them) and drive my boy to school, drive to work, talk to the four people I ever see on campus at work (all of us middle management or below, no executives to be seen, though I saw one drive to lunch today in his Tesla). One day, my office chair breaks: folds me up like a taco and I can't figure out how to fix it, like the time when I was three and my mother and aunt took me and my cousins to see Bambi in the theater and I was too small to keep the seat unfolded. Didn't Bambi come out in like 1915 or something, how old are you? my son asks. I don't know, I say, it wasn't new. I don't know why it was in the theater, it was probably 1983 or so, I was probably 5 or 6. God, you were alive then?  I can't look at my manuscript, I refresh my email every three minutes to see if I've been accepted into a Master Gardener program, I can't remember if I actually applied and I deleted that email momentarily so have lost everything. It snows, we are stranded in Denver, we get home, we take covid test after covid test. Then it is January and it rains and rains. We walk the dog through the neighborhood. The boy walking in front of my boy after school says on his phone tell Coach Beck that I won't be at practice today because I don't feel well, I ate too much salami. We laugh all the way home. I feel like I've got the timeline wrong, I've lost track. Then today, 62 degrees and sunny.  I think, maybe tonight I'll have a drink. I think maybe I'll go through the seed catalog.  I think maybe I'll read a book. It is still January. It is still--

4 year old crack in the windshield



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