I have a huge burn mark across the base of my thumb and onto the back of my hand from the oven rack, navigating a giant dutch oven. I have three other finger wounds from picking out splinters from trimming up rose bushes for winter. I wore gloves. The thorns bite right through.
I'm listening to Deliver your Children because sometimes a day wakes you up and tells you to listen to Wings. It's on a playlist of earworms along with Bottom of the Deep Blue Sea and I am a Stone.
I'm making chicken for dinner, speaking of Wings. And baked potatoes and broccoli too. It's my night to cook and so I pick healthy. There are homemade chocolate chip cookies, homemade bread and homemade bakery-style chocolate chip muffins already made if people are looking for treats. Also the haul from H-Mart is downstairs. We go there to get weird chips and pocky sticks by the case. This week's chips are chicken sauce flavoured. Chickens fucking everywhere. Including me. Bawk bawk.
Which is a lie. I was brave.
(Once.)
I'm finished my antibiotics and finally feel better after two visits with the doctor and one long phone call, though I am feeling massively run-down, hair-trigger hysterical and like I need a weekend to just sit down and pet my brain somewhere quiet. Music helps. Walking on the beach or in the woods helps. I am collecting acorns and tiny pinecones and want to learn how to electroform them. I may also have collected dead intact moths and a whole pile of little bird bones too and yet I left them in the grotto on the little table because the forest gets first dibs and also when you bring home living dead things people tend to think you're about to become a serial killer.
I do, anyway.
(Not intend to become a serial killer. I mean I assume you are one if you do that.)
I bit my nails right off this week. They are ragged and painful. The tips of my fingers already split from the cold and from the endless washing, endless questionable hand sanitizer as I walk into stores masked to the eyelashes, just trying to keep up with groceries and supplies for twenty people without being able to look down because the masks are always too big and I never realize it until it is too late to adjust them. PJ is always game and never complains as he follows me around silently, carrying the heavy things. Driving the cart. Driving one of our Jeeps, usually his, because I hardly drive anymore, not allowed to head out with my windows down and my stereo up because alone is something I can't be.
I want to bake cinnamon rolls but there's no energy here and no room left on the counter. Duncan said I can borrow his counter, if I need storage space but he is kidding and will eat them all sharing them with Dalton because they're brothers and they share everything.
I haven't had a drink, a full nights sleep or a break in forever and it blows my mind. My diamond ring hurts and I don't wear it. My mind races and I can't catch it. My thoughts are full-blown insanity but I won't admit it. I sink to the bottom here with Missio in my headphones and I can't see the surface anymore.I can take a deep breath and hold it for as long as I can and eventually peace will come creeping back to me. Right, Sam?
Or if it doesn't, you will.