snowone

Tables littered with mugs and cups and saucers, kettles on the stove whistling a symphony of steam. Nothing more than a powdered sugar dusting on yellow grass, I think we might be holding off the world’s cold all by our selves. Winking lights in the window and you with your stories of tragic loves and how the winter came about. I’ve never had a blanket like you to curl up under and I can only wish that you won’t unravel.

not to be found

Eating like a bird again, maybe it’s in defense of you. You look at me with those hungry eyes, your owl eyes, feathers brush across your face, across my lips. When you look at me, glowing eyes in the dark, I can’t look back. The trees are going up in flames and the nights close in. I curl up to wait out the winter but you- always going, never settling- what do you smell on the crisp autumn wind? What secrets do the falling leaves speak to you? What unknown places do they call you to? I can’t look at you because you’ll take the knowing part of me and leave with it.

 fires in the heart make for cold skin

drops

There are clouds in the parking lot. The trees are draped in white. The ground is white, the sky is white, I am white. I am mist (missed?). The valley has disappeared and I can see to the edge of the world. It is just over that ridge where all the color stops, drops. The mists muffle all sound here at the end of the world. Thick grass hangs heavy with cloudy gems; droplets of sky, as if the edges of the earth were bleeding together, and the heavens reached out and tangled with the hard ground. Bells in the distance.

spaces

I sleep with the moths now. Wings brushing about my cheeks, I confuse them with my eyelashes. Each night they come down from the pines at the edge of the yard and through the window I leave open now. I've given up trying to keep them out; they'll always find a way in, the rafters have so many cracks...
They used to frighten me and I'd turn on the lamp. The brightness would send them into a panic and they'd flow over me in a frantic race to the light, but they never did seethe like dark things do. In the dark they are only soft and sweet, small bodies that gather about me and when I rest they slow, fluttering with the push of my breath. They take your place now; millions of tiny arms to fill the space left behind. They are very accommodating, my new friends the moths. I'm sure they'll rearrange themselves when you come back.

...

because

"I like you too much for my own good"

"I know. I'm sorry."

"I know."

Down the shady, sunlit corridors; the dusty aisles; hours spent stitching the tiny tears in me back together. Such fine needlework, you can barely see the craftsman's hand. I'm sorry I can't give you a why. I have one, but it's not for you.

the effectiveness of rain

Missing you is getting easier. I only thought about you 57 times today (I know because I kept a tally on a scrap of paper in my pocket) as opposed to over a hundred times yesterday. If I keep going at this rate, decreasing by almost half each day, I know I'll never get to zero, but by the time you get back I'll hardly miss you at all!

Maybe if it were sunnier I wouldn't be having such a hard time. But since it's cold and wet all I want is to curl up in your arms and hear your heart beating so slow and deep.  It's amazing how powerful that one muscle can be... to gather up enough force with one perfectly timed contraction so that it can push all the blood in your body through each tiny capillary, and then bring it back. It's amazing how acutely such a strong thing can be hurt, by as cosmically microscopic an incident as, say, you leaving.

final exams

Making reference to the historical context, explain the following phrase from the Action Program of the Communist Party of Czechoslovakia: “Voluntary social organizations of the working people cannot replace dreaming, but the contrary is also true.”

The ancient Greeks believed that thoughts were facilitated by little men living inside the mind. Expand upon this statement: What was the lifespan of the little men? What happened to thoughts if the "men" died prematurely?


Examine the effect that the Moon has upon the tides. To what extent is it believed that the tides are thus affected out of love for the Moon?  Be sure to support any claims with both circumstantial and speculative evidence.

Exams creeping up, we stay awake until even the warming wind blows itself out and the world is silent and dark in the hour just before dawn, cramming our brains with information: What volume of water runs over a single river stone in the course of a day? How much does a star weigh just before it explodes? Why do parts of the body sometimes sicken and die? Knowledge learned for the sake of learning knowledge; formulas, proofs, quantifying, qualifying... and you are still the unexplained