How do I fill the time, holed up in the shadows of the ones who have left, only to forget those shadows leaving these huge dark spaces where so much light used to be?
Learn something new, I tell myself automatically, finding solace in working with my hands, keeping my brain so focused on perfecting the task at hand that it remains present, failing to wander away into the night, mistaking that ever-present darkness for a simple shadow, time after time.
How do I not stay in the past, refusing to move past the dates seared into my mind? How do I not become hypnotized by the flames, so beautiful even as they burn everything to the ground, leaving nothing but a smoky darkness that looks like shadows but with more destruction, more decay.
How do I put it down when I can't let go?
***
I wrote that a few days ago and didn't post it. It feels like me. Sounds like me, looks exactly like me, a spitting image carved in granite of Bridget's forever psyche, like a greek tragedy represented in stone. The leaves have turned red, the moon orange and the bats have returned to replace to chickadees now rare in the cold October winds. I wrap my sweater tighter around my bones, sip my coffee and listen carefully as the boys talk in their low voices. Sometimes I zone out. Sometimes I sleep sitting up. Sometimes I strain to hear and still can't and other times I want to break out of this stone and run down the grass, leaping into the saltwater, and healing the scratches and scrapes from the days keeping their hold on me. Sometimes I watch Netflix for days on end, another video up on a second screen, teaching myself continental knitting or so I hope in order to be faster at it, since the English way is slow. I'm pretty certain the Irish way of knitting is to say fuck it and pour whiskey over the whole thing, lighting it on fire, but I want to become a fine knitter as it's a brain-calming activity the likes of which I rarely find and it's an easy creative outlet when I don't want to write or paint.
The pumpkins and leaves outside are soaked. The grass so green now it looks as if someone turned up the saturation on the world and the army has begun to draw close yet again as the calendar rolls around to the truly sad bad anniversaries we can't seem to forget if we tried.