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21.10.06

We share the same house. You live here I live here.
You eat my food. Daily I prepare it. I share it. Here, sit down to the table and eat. We sit at the table. Not speaking. What is there to say when every day we eat from one pot, break bread. All of these things friends or family do.

I can tell you hate me. you eat the food because you are hungry not because you care to. The love inside is lost on you. You look down on the soup and the grains, the meat. Nothing is fresh enough for you. even the herbs and greens cut from the garden minutes before cannot compare to what you would prefer. The roots dug out from the earth have “that dirty taste.” Anything but here. Anywhere but what my hands have touched. Nothing is good enough for you.

You hate this house but you want all of it. You spread out. Claiming rooms left open for guests. You sleep in every bed. You resent every inch I inhabit. You want it for yourself. You would rather flatten the garden than eat from it. you wished it dead the minute I set my thumb to it.

I clean your dead skin from sinks and hair from floors. I propose to stop being your maid. “I hear you.” you say. “I doubt it.” I nod.

You speak with anyone but me. You creep around avoiding my good-mornings. Small talk. And I agree. No small talk. There are walls between us; you’ve made it clear - what’s yours, what’s mine. And I agree. I close the doors, turn down the heat when the rooms are empty. Don’t pass thru my space - you will soil it. I agree.

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14.10.06

Do not pity me my sad life of sleeping in offices, wayside inns and wherever I can lay my head. I am happy with my vulgar movements -- no real home, no real family -- no net to catch my fall when I’m tiptoeing on a thin wire 10 meters from the ground your feet holding still.

And you. What do you have to show for yourself? We all mourn your loss, but now what inti? Proud and pummeled. I know about that. It runs in our family. Land on our shores and we will take you in and teach you the ropes. So much to learn and so little time.

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01.10.06

three pods float and bob at the shore’s edge. I run across them, stepping stones. I run back and forth, turning quickly every few steps like sprinting stopping starting drills for futbol. The shadow of a tree encourages me towards the strong steady trunk and away to open sunny field. I’m running fast and steady, back and forth, and floating on the surface, hovering, though I am ready so ready to sink slowly down down down into the cloudy, muddy sea rising to meet me.

sea level horizons two heads higher than me. and even the tipping of the shore cannot right me and set me lingering, sitting legs dangling at the line where sky and water meet.