The days jerk on by, an unhesitating line of drunken ants. My left hand hurts like a crippled claw from typing There was some wounded animal in my dream last night, some creature i was responsible for and not sure i could handle the responsibility. I was not sure i wasn’t going to fail. To let it down. To succumb to fogetting and death Also there was a long road trip ahead, with my brother, and smoking weed at soe kind of derelict rest area for random hippies. Smoking weed out of a pellet gun. When i think of pellet guns i think of how often i’ve failed millie by forgetting to take the guns to missouri. We shot that pellet guna handful of times. It was such a great idea and she enjoyed it so much and we barely used it and now shes just about too old. This makes me feel like a butcher of feelings. A gut ripper of innocence. A helpless man on the sidelines of a bloody vortex of lost time Kathie giorgio’s thing yesterday was so much better this year than it was last year. She seemed so much happier, so much more engaged. She said at the end, “I love doing stuff like this!” And seemed to mean it. Last year i do not believe that would have been the case. Maybe it has something to do with the breast cancer and the way she has handled that. Her sand dollar story was cool, but even cooler is the fact that when she was younger she *wrote a letter to Ray Bradbury, and he wrote back!* Apparently he told her to read a lot. Snow. Snow in november. Frigid air envelops the house, reminding us that coziness is a temporary privilege. I hope my children are all grown up, survive childhood and achieve some measure of happiness and accomplishment before they begin to realize what they’re up against. Basically ijust don’t want to end up like one of those people everyone was talking about at sergio’s the other night--michael’s an hvac guy and so he sees a lot of basements. There’s some he can’t work on because they’re just too ruined, disgusting. THese are the basements of the people who when the toilet overflows start to shit in the tub. These are the people with not only a thousand cats pissing everywhere but racoons, squirrels, possums, because the garage is kept open. When titillated kids tell each other gross-out stories about these people, the subtext is *those people are crazy* and *why would anyone choose to live like that* and there’s a cleansing catharsis of counterexample. How refreshing, what a relief, to know that you’re not that subhuman thing; they picture this cackling weirdo’s conscious intention as some kind of cartoon belligerence. The witch in the fucked up gingerbread house, getting her just punishment for shunning decency and normalcy. But shit, what if it’s not like that. WHat if those people are trapped in their own decaying bodies, steered into icebergs and out into lost space, betrayed by their decaying minds. What if that old person shitting in the tub is not depraved but desperate, thinking, dear god, i’ve got to shit somewhere but i can’t get up and out of here, the thoughts are blurry, the body falters; like a trapped sick wounded animal there is literally no choice. What if they *know* how fucked up it is but can’t do anything about it? All I ask is not to end up like that. I hope I die first or else have someone to take care of me. And that, kids, is why having thousands of dollars of student loan debt is fucking scary as shit. That is why this country’s approach to health and education is fucking immoral and tragic. Because we’re given these examples by people who no fucking idea what to make of them. We’re the big fat chicken-greasy country run by fat fucks with missing teeth and pitchforks whose idea of religion is spooky stories about your neighbors. God is rich; satan is a cat lady. Take your pick. CHoose your path. McMansion or shit in the tub. WHichever way you go, it’s your own damn fault. What about my girl? What was she doing? Going from small lonely midwestern town to town, spending the rest of his money, staying in hotels, eating in diners, waking up horny as hell from slowly unwrapping nightmares of the dull terror of acceptance that he was back in her life. Relief flooded over her when she woke up and realized she was all alone. but the wad of cash wasn’t that fat anymore. She was going to have to do something else, soon, but what? Where was she, anyway? Farther south than when she started. It was getting closer to spring. Orion no longer dominated her night skies. She missed him—Orion, not *him*—although—no—missed his big ridiculous wide stance spread across the sky like he owned the place. she wanted to go with him, wherever he was disappearing to, slipping past the edge of the horizon, leaving her once more lonely as the orange glow of a single street lamp, across the highway from a gas station, waking up in another anonymous bed. sun comes up. streetlight blinks off. day begins. now what? she needed a purpose. she was a little kid once, too, you know. she wanted to serve someone, to help somehow. she had wanted to be a veterinarian. or an opera singer. haha. she smiled under the covers and for a second there’s no telling whether a laugh or a cry was about to come out. there was a knock at the door, metallic, urgent, and suddenly her heart was a palpable thing.