Tabula Rasa.

Today looks better already, the sun is out, the birds are chirping, and time marches on.

Sigh.

This must be one of those perks they talk about with regards to getting older. You know, all twelve of them, like the discount on car insurance when you absurdly point out you've been driving for Jesus Christ, twenty-four years already and your rates finally go down. Also, you can TOTALLY afford Botox now, you're just wondering if it's too soon, ironically noting that injecting botulism spores into your face would be a rash and impulsive, immature thing to do.

Give me twenty more years to mull that one over, and then I'll probably be totally up for it, when my little face has scrunched up completely into an apple doll depiction and you can no longer see my eyes, they will resemble pale green hard beads, jammed into the soft forgiving fruit, tiny wires bent into glasses pressed over the top.

I am fully prepared for those years, since as I told you, I can afford to change.

But I won't because I'm not even allowed to cut my hair without full committee approval so plastic surgery is most likely not an option for me at any point in my life and that's fine, I think I'll wind up being the poster child for being forty and feeling seventeen forever.

Okay, at least until May 2012.

Also note, I can't seem to get from one end of a post to the other without forgetting what I was talking about. Have you noticed? Yes, so have I. It's ridiculous and I can tell I need a little more sleep but why sleep when I can stand on the balcony in the dark, watching the city move beneath my feet, bright lights, big dreams and all that delicious, amazing noise?

Caleb finds my hands, resting an ice cold glass in them. I drink the burning liquid and become very small. I realize his windows are the looking glass and I run away.

Or rather, I don't because at this point in my life I can't run, I can only execute the best plans I can come up with while flying from the trapeze, knees locked, underwear firmly jacked up beyond my middle name.

I set down the drink on the table, checking to see if he is watching and then I pull my phone out of my bag and speed dial John. John hears one sentence and hangs up and inside of fifteen minutes he is there. I meet him at sidewalk level and he jumps out, coming around to the passenger side, opening my door for me with a relieved expression. He doesn't speak, he only nods as I slip past him to curl up on the seat and rest my head, staring out the window into the dark as he closes the door firmly and disappears from my view. He gets in the driver's side and starts the car and then he just sits there. He doesn't put the car in gear or anything.

John?

Silence. He is staring straight ahead, hands gripping the wheel.

John? Talk to me. You're scaring me.

You have to stop doing this, Bridge.

Doing what? I went for a drink. Gave him my expense list for the kids. We hardly even talked tonight.

Stop excusing it.

I didn't do anything wrong.

Then have him come to the house. Or email him the papers. Whatever. You need to stay away from him. Bridget, I spent almost two years of my life, every waking moment in a room or a vehicle with him and you have to understand how driven he is.

Oh, I know. He didn't get where he is by waiting for things to come to him. That's why he's so successful. I'm prattling on when John grabs my arms and pulls me right in to his face. He looks terrified.

Say that second sentence again, Bridget. SAY IT.

I've forgotten. I go over my paragraph in my head again and there it is. He didn't get where he is by...waiting for things to come to him.

What does he want?

Power.

Wrong.

Money.

Wrong again. This isn't hard, Bridget. He relaxes his hold but my elbows are throbbing and I'm not used to this sort of outburst from a guy who usually says so precious little.

Me.

Bingo.

I am dismissive. I know that, don't worry about me, I can handle him.

Bridget, you don't understand. You are the only thing he wants. And every moment you spend with him makes him more dangerous and more committed to his cause. He's never going to stop until he has you.

I know that.

No, you don't. You have no idea how the past two years have changed him.

And then John begins to talk and the things he says make my brain shrivel up and run looking for dark shadows to hide behind and false fronts to block the words.

I come back out of the dark when he pulls away from the curb, just as he says ...thirty-two years, Bridget. That's how long he has had to be denied.

Twenty-eight. He isn't denied though.

Sure he is. He comes in fifth. Do you know what that does to him?

Fifth. Do you know how ludicrous a conversation this is? I'm not doing this. Can we just go home, please?

Fine, I was just hoping that you would take your warning from someone who has nothing in it for himself.

Everyone wants something, John. Everyone. You're no different.

Jesus, Bridget. I want to be your friend.

Now you do.

I know in the past we've all been difficult, Bridget but our end goal is the same. We want you to be happy and we want to keep you safe and Caleb isn't safe.

What's the difference.

It was a statement, not a question and John just shook his head and kept a tight grip on the wheel. Almost home. He took the exit and we wound our way down the mountain toward the sea. He didn't say any more, he just pulled up in front of the house and waited for me to reach the front door and then he drove away. When he got to the turnaround in the highway I'm sure he texted Lochlan to tell him he couldn't get through to me. Lochlan would have reassured him that they will try again.

When things look different, like today.

Only this is harder and time has a higher cost again. I am home by myself during the day now, watched over by just PJ who has a lot to do but drops it on a dime when I walk into the room, only I don't very often. I remain in my little chair typing like mad, wearing out the keyboard and futzing around with my stories and half-written novels and poetry and emails too. I try not to watch the clock and I try not to think so hard. Maybe they could inject that Botox directly into my brain and I could have a beautiful, youthful lobotomy.

Except that I would like to forget only the bad things. And that isn't possible.

***

When Caleb called this morning I started to talk the moment I pressed the answer button, not giving him a chance. Sorry, I said, I realized I was too tired to spend much time so I slipped out early and I was rude and didn't say goodbye and I should have called because I'm sure you were worried-

He laughed. I don't worry about you, I have you followed to make sure you arrive safely at home. I just wanted to know if you were going to admit you were afraid and called in your knights. Apparently not. Call me when you want to end this pretense, Bridget. I have a revised deal for you.

My brain was still racing as he hung up so I had to wait and process the words to the tune of the silence and then I realized that he wasn't playing games anymore and I dropped my phone on the floor.

Deepest greys.

Maybe not such a good day. Not bad by any means, just not great.

These are bound to happen and I am optimistic that maybe this one will be it for a little while. I am close to tears all day and completely overwhelmed and buried under questions and inquiries and instructions and waiting for updates and I made an amazing lemon bundt cake this morning and forget to not follow the directions and tried to pry it out of the pan after ten minutes, when if you've been baking for as long as I have you know better and you wait until it's room temperature because otherwise it will break apart and it did so we chopped it up and put the glaze on and now it's a sort of a crumble-dessert. It's very good only I was hoping for slices as a treat for the boys who don't live here but visit every day. Home baking is a treat any time, if you have a penis, apparently. It's sort of a pain in a ass to me, when I can buy cookies for $5, why in the hell would I want to mix and stir and bake and then I guess...hope they come off the pan intact?

But I still make a lot of things, mostly things that end in cake because cake is supposed to make Bridget feel better, only this time the cake was just the icing on my..cake of a day, I guess.

Ben took me for chicken fingers when he got home and I feel a little better but now I have a stabbing hot poker of a pain in my chest and if I don't find a way soon to not be completely overthrown every time life hands me a curve ball or that big list of things to be done, I think I will implode. Or maybe I'll learn to relax the hard way, like I already do, breathing through panic attacks, wishing I had all my shit together like everyone else seems to, even though I know that's a fallacy on both counts.

I am reading One Day by David Nicholls. In it, the male lead remarks about not having cried for eight years prior to a massive breakdown after visiting his dying mother. Notable to me was not the fact that hey, he has baggage and Christ, what an asshole, but eight years without a tear? Is he a robot?

I don't think I've ever gone eight days. Maybe I'll start keeping track. I mean, I have nothing to prove and I'm not saddled with gender bias when it pertains to visible emotions (hell, if they are visible, I CAN SHOW YOU EVERY LAST ONE) but I could take a stab at not crying for a bit and see what happens, even though I have a tendency to drop big fat blubbery tears in place of any definable emotion. I've always been this way. When I think about Cole or Jacob and how they could talk me down until I had dry eyes and even breaths, I believe it was a gift that the others are learning about as slowly as I adapt to change.

In other words, I'll let you know how that goes too.

So what am I doing tonight? Killing time while I wait for Caleb to arrive. Seeing the new paperwork, payroll and benefits falling into place for the boys, who depend on me when they CLEARLY SHOULDN'T for very important Life Decisions I'm not qualified to make, realizing it's just about mid-week, and the upcoming weekend will be necessary and restorative, and assuring you that you are completely pulled together and awesome, because thank God you're not a little mess too.

Tomorrow will be better, this too shall pass, as they say. Also Caleb is here now, and the first words out of his mouth were How are your tales of woe tonight, princess?

How indeed.

I smiled darkly for him, before telling him I would be just a few more minutes, because he's one of the few who simply embraces me as I am, weird panicky uptight competence and everything. Like a little ball of nervous energy, I'll do just fine. Just don't ask me how I'm doing. Caleb won't ask, he'll just decide.

On my behalf.

Which is fine with me and probably better anyway. Let him pick. Let him choose everything and then maybe someday I won't have to answer for it. Call the shots and hit those targets, and bag yourself a kill girl.

Known for.

Tonight I'm sitting between Ben's knees on the second step down, drinking tea with honey and watching Lochlan fire juggling while he keeps up a steady stream of banter. I am in stitches even though I know all the lines, all the openings he will use to slide seamlessly from one conversation to another, to keep our interest, to keep the hopes for tips alive when the show grows long in the heat, in this day and age of fleeting spans of attention.

But no one ever looks away from him, there's just something about Loch that makes you wish he would pay his attention to you in the form of his lopsided confident grins and his messy, curly red-blonde hair. Even Ben is hanging on every word, for I think Ben finds Lochlan far cuter than he will admit most nights, if at all. But I don't know for sure, they talk in low voices and I miss half of what they say. So I just mostly watch and never listen. Never, ever listen.

When we were very young (the annual event addition).

When we were teenagers (with trucks, gotta have trucks and then you have it MADE), every September we drove out to CFB Shearwater in a caravan for the air show. Mostly it was a day of walking around bored watching the boys check out the static displays and dehydrating myself into a chapped lather because there would be exactly four portable toilets that would feature lineups so long you might still be there the next fall, if you weren't careful. It was $20 a truckload to get in, and it was an endurance day. But I was always so uncharacteristically excited by the noise and aerobatics, and waited patiently for the planes to take to the skies.

Then the children were born, Shearwater stopped putting on the air shows and well, we found other things to do. We also moved and the Prairies never seemed to know if they wanted to do air shows or not. It was the decade that saw us boarding a lot of planes but rarely watching them fly.

Fast forward to 2010, and we see the listing for an Abbotsford air show.

(Now to begin, no one really knew much about Abbotsford, only that on the map it was out at the other end of the Fraser Valley and that's fine, we're always on the road because this whole lower mainland is spread out like peanut butter on toast and I have doubled the miles on my car since we moved here.)

2010 came and went in a blur and I regretted not investigating this air show until I saw the ad in the paper last Wednesday and realized it was back! We didn't miss it! Come hell or high water, this is what we're doing on Sunday. Which is today!

So we loaded up the children and off we went.

Firstly, $100 a carload means we have hit the classy air show, or something. Times sure do change. Also, pilots don't speak down to me anymore because I am not a surly, giggly teenager, I am someone's mother now, and someone (times two) is climbing through their cockpit/helicopter/parachute so the pilots answer all my questions very patiently. This also might be due to my husband's sometimes-pilot status (recreational only) and the guy that actually owns a whole airplane (Satan) standing nearby, but I prefer to assume that my cute blonde good looks bring all the pilots to the yard (like a milkshake only without the milk. Or the shake. Or anything...okay, moving on.)

I finally got to meet Julie Clark, who has flown in every air show I have ever been to. I declined the funnel cakes near the stands because they were larger than my head, and also completely flat and really...weird looking and it just looked like 4000 calories I would be trying to pawn off on the boys later. I did have a Lemon Heaven lemonade and I caught on quickly. The first cup featured an ENTIRE lemon in it, with hardly any lemonade. The second time Ben went and he came back without the lemon, but with a lovely large thingie of lemonade that was gone in ten seconds. Who puts a whole lemon in a glass? The Lemon Heaven people, that's who.

I also mistakenly visited a (will remain nameless) booth serving poutine. Mistakenly, because yuck. Ben was thrilled with his but Ben never has any standards when it comes to poutine. In fact, give him a raw potato, a packet of fake gravy and a block of cheese and he'll pantomime the whole tequila routine, sucking the cheese, lick the gravy and then swallow the potato whole and declare it to be the Best Thing Ever, but he also eats lip gloss and steering wheels so really, he isn't one to go to for food recommendations. Next time I'll pack a picnic, since the whole "No Coolers" sign by the parking field turned out to be a total and utter lie.

The show was amazing, however, and there were loads of washrooms available (very important when spending eight+ hours at an event) and everything cost an arm, leg or a child so I am completely out of cash and also! burnt to a little crisp again because the sun came out but I was having far too much fun and so I never pay attention to my skin until I am pink and sore all over and Lochlan starts making that face that warns of future painful to the touch lobster princesses but he is also really red tonight so what the heck does he know? Also? Bastard ate a funnel cake.

And I am still jealous.

We learned all our lessons for next year as well. Leave earlier to get there earlier to get a good spot and bring chairs. Bring the cooler. Chips would be good. Sunscreen, sunglasses and hats are necessities and always, always ask questions.

Suspend adulthood, cheer, clap and wave, you uptight fuckwads, and whatever you do, dream about flying.
(Ben took a picture of me taking a picture of the Harvard. What a cute little plane)

And funnel cakes. Dream about the funnel cakes. Next year, I'm getting one. 2012. Be there or be horribly, sadly deprived.

Go and tell the King.

(Lady luck, be on my side.)

Today has been a series of three steps forward and two back. Just when I get all caught up the sky begins to sag dangerously around the edges and I adopt my Chicken Little voice, uptight, choked-off, hope we can hold it together just a little longer, no-flights-must-fight stance.

It's rather painful and I am the absolute mistress of Blowing Shit Out of Proportion.

But never mind, it will work out because no one is out to get me and the worst case scenarios can be overcome and I'm hopefully a little panicky over nothing. Hopefully, said in a whisper, fingers crossed behind my back, though I have a headache and a bottle of gin at the ready because I refuse to worry about things anymore and I think part of the fun of life is supposed to involve having a running agenda of Things That Must Be Dealt With but really? That's fucking stupid. I'm more in the camp that does everything that has to be done and then schedules downtime. I guess you can imagine how well that works out, most of the time, right?

Exactly.

I have to admit I've been a little (okay, a lot) nervous about the changes, about the boys working for Batman instead of Caleb. I know Caleb so much better. I can handle him. Batman is still mostly an unknown entity to me. I mean, he knows ME through and through but as far as he goes, well, I am in the dark, mostly by choice, because it made life easier to conduct it without strings, obligations or expectations when it came to him.

So that leaves me a little unsure. A lot hopeful, yes, but once again I find myself leaping carelessly across the chasm, eyes welded shut, teeth gritted in anticipation of what could be a soft landing, if luck is on my side.

And I have never asked her if she is. On my side, that is. Sometimes I'm one hundred percent sure we are a pair, matched forever and sometimes she just up and disappears and returns much later. After the shrapnel has rocked to a stop in a wide radius, she stands looking around innocently, maddeningly saying There was nothing I could have done so how could you have missed me in the first place, Bridget? Those days I swear I'm disowning her and I throw things and cry toward her direction but she stands firm. Other times I turn around to run away and she's right there with such a confident expression and she'll reach forward and pinch me very hard and smile and say stupid, amazing things like See? There was nothing to worry about, was there? I nod, sure she can't stand up to the sort of luck I require now, as I rub my arm where she twisted my thin skin in her strong fingers.

So I give myself a little pep talk and I vow I won't worry so much but then I do and it's pretty much my standard operating procedure and boy, it sure drives everyone crazy but then in a few weeks I can hopefully come back and read these words and have that reassurance that yeah, it all pretty much worked out and really I devote way too much energy to my fear of the inevitable, the uncontrollable and the eventually unimportant.

I'm going to teach myself how to stop that. I'm just not sure how yet. I'll figure it out eventually and you all will be so proud.

Last night, he explained to someone else as I watched the water intently, that I was something of a Sea Witch and that no one knew or loved the ocean more.

I should have been insulted, maybe, it seems like such an odd turn of phrase. I don't believe I've ever used it, nor have I read of it past a fleeting reference in The Little Mermaid when Ruth was a baby, but instead it left me somewhat gratified in knowing that sometimes when I feel like I might get left behind and will have to fight to catch up, he really does know me very well indeed.

Safety Loop.

(Let's continue with escapes into nostalgia, just for today, okay?)

Stuttering, cold and damp
feel the warm wind, tired friend
Times are gone for honest men
And sometimes far too long
For snakes in my shoes
A walking sleep
And my youth I pray to keep
Heaven send Hell away
No one sings like you anymore
Hang my head, drown my fear
Till you all just disappear

It was a total fluke and yet there I was. Dressed in leggings and a skin-tight t-shirt while they put chaulk on my hands, forearms, knees and feet. Hair in a bun and secured seven times over. It will take me the better part of an hour to find all the elastic bands and bobby pins used. Enough makeup to rival the clowns. It took Lochlan scrubbing my face for an hour with soap to get it all off later.

Zero risk, for the net is tight and the lines have been triple checked by Reza and then by Lochlan, three times in fact. I cannot die on Lochlan's watch, he says or he will never forgive himself. At the same time he is fairly grinning with stupidity and anticipation.

Reza put his hands on my shoulders. I am paying strict attention. He looks stern. I want to make him relax so I tell him that I am listening.

You will fly, Breegeet. (Everything is heavily accented in Reza's universe.) Enjoy eet.

My brain kinks, badly. These are my instructions? I turn and give the goofy-fear face to Lochlan who steps in and tells me to start swinging and then bring my legs up through my arms and simply slide backwards, letting go with my hands while continuing to hold on with my knees. The moment I feel the hands on my arms I am to disengage my knees and I will swing from Reza's hands. If I fail to pull away from the swing, I am going to fall forty feet. There is no alternative. Too many steps. Can't compute.

I shake my head when he asks me if I understand and tell him I'm going to be sick.

He laughs. Pukey-excited or pukey-scared?

Both.

Then go with excited. It's going to be amazing.

The acrobat I might be replacing got pregnant and ran away with the hired accountant. Currently no one is paying us until the owner arrives and yet the show must go on. I am fourteen years old now and I feel as if I have this huge responsibility to entertain the entire town sufficiently or all will be for naught and we have worked so hard here.

(Daily I am remind to tell people I am nineteen, if asked. The circus was not the midway, I have to be of age here and I'm so not prepared. Looking back at photographs I defy anyone to believe my age unless they were blind. Some of them were, though, in our defense, since they gave us lots of money for what I would call disposable memories. Being in the circus is like being a court jester. You are employed to entertain the passive crowd, who watch. That's it. It isn't hard if you are good at what you do. But this is different. The stakes are high with this act. Forty feet, to be exact.)

Lochlan kisses my forehead and whispers that he loves me. I am biting my lip and too nervous to speak. I think I have changed my mind and I'll go back to calling for the games and running for whoever needs me and filling in wherever I can for the show instead of being one of the main attractions.

I think I'd rather run away too right now but this is away. This is escape and the imaginary place where nothing ever goes wrong, only everything has already gone wrong, Bridget and here I stand risking what they say is nothing but in reality it's everything and I have a long way to go before I crawl out of this hole of recklessness and an inability to outwardly panic and gee, I hope that they notice soon and save me from myself because I seem to have it in for me.
And then I flew. And I fell. And then I did it eight more times until I wasn't crawling out of the net on my hands and knees, rope biting against my skin like barbed wire, muscles flexed and aching, mind soaring. I didn't know what to think of this.

Well done, Breegeet! A star iz born!

I didn't hear Reza. That's what Lochlan told me he said.

All I heard was the wind at the top of the tent, a delicious, frightening song just for me. When my feet touched the ground for the last time on that very last night of that show, I knew this was not the life for me, even though I did go back when I became an adult, for a time.

Just to make sure.

No colors anymore.

I see a line of cars and they're all painted black
With flowers and my love, both never to come back
I see people turn their heads and quickly look away
Like a newborn baby it just happens every day

No more will my green sea go turn a deeper blue
I could not foresee this thing happening to you
If I look hard enough into the setting sun
My love will laugh with me before the morning comes

Leisurely mornings, now. Ben's schedule has altered once again so that we wake up at six and play for the better part of the first hour of the day, held tightly in each other's arms, rocked through the sunrise and into the morning, proper. He puts his hand over my mouth and I won't make a sound, and he leaves me wanting for nothing before turning me out of the sheets and into my day, a good twelve hours before I can return to his arms like a slow-motion boomerang girl, bent in just the right places, met and scrubbed clean in the hot water before returning to the sheets in the dark. Days are long and as usual he is the last one in through the front door at night.

Late in the evenings Ben returns, his slow grin hiding behind the day's fatigue. Happy to see me. Happy to be home. We usually have a quiet dinner alone together in the kitchen. I wait and cook for the two of us after everyone else has eaten and drifted off to evening pursuits around the house and grounds. We tell each other about our days and then he goes to see the others while I finish cleaning up the kitchen and get the children tucked into their beds to read until ten or shortly before. If he makes it back before I am finished he'll pick up his guitar and play for me while I hurry around the kitchen and then just as quickly I pull it all together and then he replaces the guitar in the case and holds his arms out wide, pulling me into them, where I stay for the remainder of the dark.

Frankly (because it's hot and I'm really cranky).

In lieu of current, former and future drama let's cut right to the chase.

Lattes and Cappuccinos? They're the same thing. Don't tell me different, you twenty-year-old coffee uh...'aficionados'. It's all bullshit anyway and the only reason you drink it is to appear grown-up, just like I did when I started college and all the boys had jobs and I walked around the University campus trying to make friendships with my bag in one hand and a coffee in the other. That was in the day before we had Starbucks in Canada and there was no Tim Hortons for miles. We got our coffee out of a vending machine. It was $1.80 which was a virtual fortune so I only did it a couple of times a week.

Oh, look, I just made one of those walked-to-school-uphill-both-ways-in-the-snow stories, didn't I? That's fine, nobody cares, I am tired and back to afternoon coffee so I don't fall asleep in the fridge while cooking dinner.

Also but unrelated, I still miss McDonald's pizza. And pizza on a stick from the Red River Ex, oddly enough. And pizza corner pizza in Halifax. Now feel lucky you know me, for I truly am one of a kind. Ghetto coffee and lowbrow pizza. You really can take the girl out of the midway, but you can't take the midway out of her diet, apparently. (Seriously. Ask Lochlan precisely why I'm so short and he will tell you my growth was stunted with a diet of candy necklaces and lake water. The occasional cream soda and those disgusting carnival hotdogs. If I never see another hot dog as long as I live it will be too soon.)

Back to my nap. Standing up. Mid-conversation possibly.

(For those asking, yesterday's post stands. I'm not confirming if it was last Saturday night or years ago. The time frame has little bearing on anything when it comes to Satan, and I'm not taking it down just because they said it would be better if I did.)

Numbed down.

Cole is painting again. A beautiful day and the curtains are drawn tight against the sun. He has a gooseneck lamp clipped to the side of his easel and he keeps moving it around, trying to find a play on the weird shadows it casts across his canvas.

I am curled on the couch, eating popcorn. Watching him watch me as he tries to work, knowing he's bullshitting, an easy grin proving his good mood. He isn't taking anything seriously tonight in his too-long chestnut hair and his baggy paint-streaked 501s. He didn't put on a shirt this morning, we rolled out of bed stark naked and ate cereal in the kitchen without clothes and then he pulled on the jeans thinking he would get dressed at last but I stole his t-shirt and put it on for warmth. Until we opened the curtains the sun would not warm the room. We didn't touch them.

He walks over to me, yanking up the t-shirt. I grip the bowl of popcorn tightly so it doesn't fly everywhere. Take that off and I'll paint you.

No way. Not naked. I don't want everyone to see it.

You have nothing to be ashamed of.

It's not shame. You don't keep your paintings.

Why do you care if someone wants to buy a portrait of a nude girl?

Because it's me.

They won't know it's you.

I'll know it's me.

You don't see yourself the way I see you. He smiles again. He's very gentle with my conscious self. He's eager to rebuild my self-esteem. Starting from scratch, we've got a long way to go. Perhaps I'll just fake it instead. I stretch out and set the bowl on the floor in an effort to prove I'm not self-conscious at all and he joins me on the couch, pulling up my shirt as I pull his jeans down. Soon I am the canvas, covered with paint, awash in a light of potential.

****

I don't know why I remembered that morning as I lay in bed this morning, staring into the mirrored closet doors. White sheets, white everything. Nothing to distract from the outstanding, breathtaking view through the windows of the water, sunshine sparkling on the waves.

There is popcorn all over the floor. I throw the sheet away from my skin and stretch lightly. I wonder if I look the same or if I look like I feel, paint now faded, muted pastel, potential wasted or spent or wherever it eventually goes, youth abandoned on squares of a calendar crossed off one at a time, hours in between. I close my eyes and leave the sheets off, willing myself to fall back to sleep and instead his voice breaks through my peaceful memories, as they have snuck up on me so quietly today. Good memories of Cole are like shooting stars, sometimes I get them all at once, sometimes weeks or even months pass without a smile aimed toward his image.

That analogous voice speaks again, startling me back into the white room. My eyes fly open and I see him in the mirror. He's in his 501s and nothing but, to read the papers in on the balcony. Not quite the same voice but as close as I will ever get again.

So glad to see you feel comfortable.

I reach down and yank the sheet up, fantasy now obscured. It's not as if he hasn't seen everything, I just prefer not to be so exposed anymore. I am forever raw and uncovered as it is, my heart flayed open for all to see what's left of it and what's left in it, so a little modesty is so little to ask for. A little dignity, but I would not be permitted that. I threw it off the balcony last night, followed by my consciousness, and what's left is a vague headache and a fuzzy memory of nothing more than the black velvet ribbons he keeps in the drawer and the lousy excuses he forwards to the house, tucked in neatly besides.

At my request all eyes are blind, all words left unspoken and history gets temporarily suspended so that I can have a moment in my life that contains things I regret walking away from, in spite of the need to do so. I show up, take a drink from his hand and shortly thereafter I forget my own name. Who wouldn't do that for a few hours with a ghost? Who wouldn't take the chances given to turn back the clock even if it meant destroying the present and preventing the future?

Clearly you don't know me at all. That's okay. Today I don't know me either. I forgot sometime around eleven o'clock last night and each time reality takes a little longer to come back. I find a piece of popcorn just above my pillow and I eat it for breakfast, a little bird with a treasure, a tiny gift of kindness in a loud and scary world. Maybe I'll come back for more treats. Maybe I'll be scared away for good.

It all depends.