Caught

I just feel like I'm caught between so many things. I feel like being here at school, and leaving. I feel like sleeping, but I want to stay awake. I'm hungry but I don't feel much like eating. I'm happy to go, and I'm devastated. The only non polar desire I have is to see her.

I've already been rained on twice today. Normally I'd enjoy the feeling of light rain pouring. I feel sort of mocked now, partly filled with gloom. Does it rain on her too?

And time. I know I've discussed it before. But time. I've never felt the passing of time so slowly, as if every second realized it was transitory and decided to fully express itself.

Reminds me of a Linda Pastan poem, how I've been feeling lately. I read it when I was happy and felt this deep sense of grief. Its almost laughable that it captures how I feel now.

Letter


It is December in the garden,
an early winter here, with snow
already hiding my worst offenses –
the places I disturbed your moss
with my heavy boots; the corner
where I planted in too deep a hole
the now stricken hawthorne: crystals
hanging from its icy branches
are the only flowers it will know.

When did solitude become
mere loneliness and the sounds
of birds at the feeder seem
not like a calibrated music
but the discordant dialects
of strangers simply flying through?
I have tried to construct a life
alone here – coffee at dawn; a jog
through the chilling air

counting my heartbeats,
as if the doctor were my only muse;
books and bread and firewood –
those usual stepping-stones from month
to freezing month. But the constricted light,
the year closing down on itself with all
the vacancies of January ahead, leave me
unreconciled even to beauty.
When will you be coming back?