Revelations

 Sharing with The Sunday Muse #169:

It takes time for the quest to settle into your calves,

to work through your soles and up to your shoulders,

spreading through nerve and vessel until 

you can't go home because you've already

left something of yourself there.

You can't be in two places at once. You remember

vacations but now you think your family's plans

probably resembled some supervillain's

monologue:  we'll do this and then

take them here. It'll be fun.

When do you leave the house on time? Who's

time? There's a collar of dead bushes at the lawn

in front of the gas station, a tiny, grassy

patch of the suburbs beyond, ruins

of landscaping, bright, dead.

Two years ago feels like twenty, feels loud,

a power wash of wind through the window; roaring

down the dry sewers that funnel a/c

through the lawns and backwards,

carrying dreams dry and sharp.

At this speed, everything cuts as it passes.

Appendix 1:  Chrissa is Full of Stuff and Nonsense

Let's begin with a confession. Today (7/17/2021) is the first day in over a year that I set foot in a mall. And to continue:  I wanted to run down every corridor and at least poke my head in every store and stand right there in the entrance and cry. What we did, instead, was hustle into the bookstore (which didn't have a separate entrance, otherwise we never would have been in that concourse in the first place). I'm still skittish in public. I checked for the book I was looking through, speed-checked the rest of the shelves, found exactly nothing I was willing to take home (except a blank book--I am a terrible hoarder of notebooks) and then left. The entire time I was trying to drown out my brain shouting at me that I was being stupid and reckless. I didn't go anywhere else in the mall. I'm still not sure whether I want to cry, spend three hours in the shower, or just get over myself. The reality is, whether or not this was a foolish endeavor, I'm pretty sure the past year and a half has broken something fundamental in my sense of the world...like the ending of Labyrinth in which the goblin castle is in pieces and nothing fits together properly. 

Appendix 2: The Writing Stuff

Camp NaNo has experienced a little hiccup. I'm having a difficult time motivating myself to keep going, although I have fallen back into a favorite series to remind myself that everything doesn't have to be grim and full of lessons to be a good book. I'm very much enjoying remembering this and will probably go on to read the finish of another series soon. What this means is that I need a new paranormal series to creep into afterward. Suggestions welcome.

Appendix 3: Chrissa Finds Additional Stuff and Nonsense

I'm the type of reader who pokes through appendices the way you'd go through someone's bookshelves, looking for interesting things to borrow (or check out later). I'm also the type of person who, when confronted with a large closet, daydreams about turning it into a tiny office/gallery. Which is an unrelated bad habit...but it does indicate a predilection for poking into things. If this appendix were a closet, it would be full of unmatched socks dedicated to dinosaurs who sneak into pools at night  for a good swim and a think.

Appendix 4: A Way Out!! 

Hope you have a wonderful week & that productivity abounds. Or rest. Or good pool days. Or good novels. All the best!

-- chrissa