We gotta move on, dear.

 It's like a years-long wait for the barest hint of inspiration. It's like waiting for a 16-block high ice sculpture to melt so you can find out the release of a new Drake album. It's like waiting for spring when spring is here and as Ben pointed out yesterday all of the lilac bushes save for the one struggle bus in the center of everything that barely survived has flowers coming and I can't wait for them to all explode at once. 

(For the record, I don't think I can name a Drake song anymore. Cellphone? Something. He's still the worst Degrassi kid to me and that will never change. Also a stunt wasting that much water on the precipice of  what will surely be a terrible forest fire season is all but criminal.

He's like Avenged Sevenfold. Don't care. Not aware but somehow I run into them freaking EVERYWHERE. Seem them live multiple times without even trying. Explain it, please, because I can't. I do love Afterlife and I've seen it live so perhaps the universe has chosen for me.)

We are looking at a lovely weekend with very very precious little to do and I'm so excited I could shit my pants. The dirt is still in a giant pile in the driveway but I can chip away at it. So can the boys. It's cheaper and healthier than going to the gym and safer than running. Especially these days. I run like there's cement in my brain now. Or at least in the cavity where my brain used to be before it packed up and slithered away to follow the music it heard. Probably coming from some shady, rusted truck driving by that featured a serial killer for a driver. Or maybe that's the plot of another Jeepers Creepers. I'll watch it. Watch me watch it.

Anyway I have a terrible artist block right now and it's been going on pretty much for all of the 2020s and I'm getting fed the fuck up. I'm trying things and they're working but do I want to do it? No. Not at all.

White Cedars.

The sun begins to set around eight at night and I'm feeling like this is the beginning of spring proper. We did a whole heaping bunch of stressful grownup things lately and now the time is ours. I've slept through two nights in a row. I have zero dinner ideas left in my head but if I pass it off to PJ or the others they instantly begin to debate takeout and I am not interested in a four-thousand-calorie dinner every night. 

Well, that's not true. I am, but I shouldn't be. They sure are though. 

But it's a hassle. You either pay a kings ransom for delivery or you need to jump on the highway and drive for thirty plus minutes there and back so the food has steamed itself unrecognizable and something is usually missing. 

I could sit in a restaurant all day every day, however. As long as they bring me a nice white wine or a spicy caesar. And bread. I love bread. And then the food is hot and if something isn't there someone hightails it back to the chef to get it for you and then they bring you free cake at the end because they don't want to piss off the people at the table even though we don't play high and mighty. You don't need to be like that unless you've been horribly wronged and I'm not talking about an overcooked steak or a missing salad. 

Anyway it's dinner time and I'm starving so I've thrown some potatoes in the oven to bake and will shortly throw some chicken in too. Then some sliced cucumbers with sesame oil and rice vinegar and we're good. 

Anyway. I'm listening to Panopticon again, which is normally a mid-fall or late-winter pick for me but turned out to be a wonderful windy-spring selection. Very crunchy-emotional. Very lovely. One rule is that if I think it's cool, it's cool. At least to all of them. 

I've got my own fan club. Maybe it's because I feed them homecooked food? 

When Lochlan is on higher ground (and can't even see me from there).

 6:44/7:41 and I've all but figured out Daydreaming on the piano, but in my own arrangement. Slower, more plodding. Spoken words, changed to fit the moment. 

The moment being arms outstretched, pushing back spring in favour of hibernating. Instead of cherry blossoms it's a chill, an endless shiver in my bones and yet when I try to cry out to tell them it hurts, greywater pours out of my mouth, my eyes, my ears. It never stops raining and I swim up against the swirling blossoms as they crush underneath the droplets, pink ruin that distracts you from my death. 

It's not working. 

It's not working at all. 

All I hear is Caleb singing I Promise under his breath, as he lies in the half-light, his arm looped lazily around my neck, loosely unless I try to move or shift and then it tightens involuntarily, akin to trying to nap with a toddler. You're half awake and with all these checks and balances in the form of touch in case they move away. 

To keep them out of trouble. 

To keep them safe. 

To keep them close. 

I can feel the razor burn warmth on the back of my neck and shoulders, no teeth marks this time but a brain-mark in which the scars are deep and permanent and yet I can't let go. 

I need to keep him out of trouble. 

I need to keep him safe, keep him close. 

But it's slower, and more plodding and it's been so many years the arrangement has changed a thousand times and yet the song remains the same. A lament disguised as a pop song, a tonic that briefly eclipses the panic behind my eyes as I drown, and he lets me.