My peonies started opening today and the poppies were gone in a flash. Too late, too wet for them but also they were too crowded and I had put a cage around the plant for the winter and then forgot to take it away when the growing began in earnest. It's fine. It was a small cheap plant that I was stubborn about and it's spectacular some years and ugly others.
Like me.
I have an enamel fifteen puzzle I can't solve. Ha. You'd think it would be easy. My fingers are down to the bone sliding tiles for hours and I can't do it. It's worth the twelve dollars and the boast that it's from the thirties. Pretty sure it will be ninety years before I can solve it, truth be told. I'll be like a hundred and forty something and blathering on about this little puzzle that fits in my dress pocket and is the stuff of kinder, gentler nightmares.
Lochlan holds me while I sleep, which is the best way and so the nightmares have to go through him first, and so I know he is exhausted, catching some and setting them on fire before they can reach me, others he dilutes in seawater to make them less sharp, some he lets slip through his fingers gently into my brain and others he bricks into a room, covering the door and they'll never see the light of day again. He's always been so good at keeping the monsters away, there's only one he can't read, one he doesn't know what to do with.
We're working on it though.
I hold him while he sleeps, softening the alarm, anchoring him to me through the night so that he can find the light of day, keeping him focused and reassured that we're doing good. We're okay. We'll be fine and we'll be stronger afterward. It's been a multi-decade mantra and we are superhumans at this point but then why do I still feel like wet paper in a strong wind?
What's written on you?
My whole heart.
It's such a long read.
With no ending.
It will be happy though. The fortune teller said so.