Weeks that begin with me running in one direction and end with me running right back.

Reassurance weighs more than oxygen some days.

Lay your heart into my perfect machine
I will use it to protect you from me
I will never let you see what's beneath
So good for you and good for me
We told ourselves we're right where we ought to be

Lochlan had enough with the bickering, yelling, the one brief struggle where Caleb decided not letting go of me when I was ready to leave his vicinity was well enough and gave a warning as only he can, with that expression that can flatten mountains with a clap that startles everything within a thousand-mile radius, birds taking flight, everything else running for cover. I'm the only soul who doesn't, holding my ground but waiting quietly for whatever's next.

He tilts his head and gives me a look like what the FUCK are you doing, and then he pulls me back inside, just as Caleb forgets he lives in this house and not the other one. It happens with a comical frequency and sometimes worries me just a little.

The rest of the day I spend within three inches of Lochlan because he's had it up to here, wherever that is, it's too high for me to see clearly and then once the dark settled he led the way back to where we're supposed to be, hands sliding up the back of my dress, lifting it over my hair, biting his lip, curled in slightly in thought, eyes reflecting light from nowhere, hands so warm I made a note to check for burns in the morning. Just one single kiss from him sends me to outer space and I know damn well the door was locked and he didn't let me breathe or sleep or come down from the dark until long after the rest of the house stirred and left for the day.

Only then did he let go and I resented it and told him so.

And he laughed cruelly. For the moment you do but that will change. 

Will it?

He nods. Every. fucking. time. 

I'm sorry. 

Don't be. I get off on it too. Then I feel ashamed and I get angry about it. 

He hasn't talked like that for years. Decades even. Not since I was very young and not understanding what he was trying to tell me. I make a note to work harder at that because it's an albatross we keep resurrecting because we don't know what else to do.

I love you, Peanut. 

I love you, Locket. 

More than him? 

No idea who he means. Not like it matters. You never have to ask that again because I love you more than everything. 

Right now you do.

Every moment, I do. 

Promise me, Bridget. His voice drops to a hoarse whisper and it breaks my heart. He rarely shows fear, rarely seems to show anything but overreaching common fucking sense and ridiculous affection and never lets me know it's getting to him, that it bothers him, that he really wants it to stop but at the same time wants it to go on forever.

I promise, Locket. I whisper it back, because it's too heavy to speak out loud. It weighs a thousand tons and it means the world.

He nods. Good. Just making sure.

Parallels to Midsommar, an elegy in the key of B.

Good morning.

(Mild spoilers ahead but not really).

Screaming at Caleb turned into an effort to salvage the day with whatever that thing is that people call 'self-care'. To me, it's akin to attempting to carry on a long, deep conversation in a language I don't know, having hurriedly looked up a few key words in a battered thesaurus I keep in my bag. I don't know what I'm doing but I guess I can try and go through the motions.

Ruth took a hold of whatever ruinous mind I had left, inviting me to watch Midsommar with her. It came out on iTunes this week and while she's seen it, loved it and has been anxiously awaiting the director's cut, she was game to watch it again, still feeling guilty for encouraging me to watch Ari Aster's last movie, Hereditary, which, while it illustrated grief and shock in a way you just never see put to film properly, I wouldn't wish it on my worst enemy and therefore did not invite Caleb to watch it with me. As it stands I was wrong, presently he can serve as my worst enemy and depending on how the rest of today goes, I may suggest he take in a double feature.

Midsommar draws many parallels to my own life. We have a commune, an adorable blonde girl in a flower crown, a bear featured early on, not to be seen again until the bitter end, some handsomeish men arguing nonstop, fighting for supremacy, understanding and common sense. There is some singing, some crying, more than a handful of vicious suicides so graphic I think I'm perhaps not as jaded as I once confidently assumed, and then a metric shit ton of human sacrifice and an exceeding weird uncomfortable sex scene with an audience.

So basically my life, in a two-hour celluloid extravaganza of colour and beauty, set in the mountains of Utah, I think. I was told, anyhow.

I'd like my flower crown now, please. That's the only thing missing. I'll be your fucking May Queen.

It was definitely almost a three-hour departure from all of this bullshit, only spanning three hours as people would walk in to see what the ungodly sounds were, and Ruthie would patiently pause the movie and explain it to them. I wanted to laugh and then I wanted to cry. Then I was sad it was over because it seemed as though the right people were truly getting their due and otherwise I'm almost relieved Aster is going to move on, apparently wanting to make a comedy so that I never have to go through one of his movies again.

I'm still thinking about it and how it made me feel. That's the best part, the measure of success to me, not in making a masterpiece but finding something to evoke a feeling so intense in your viewer that they are rocked back in their seat, changed somehow. That's the hallmark of a good job, to me, be it movie or music. It's the feeling I get when I listen to Pachebel's Chaconne in F Minor. A sort of weightless, melancholic, hypocritical joy that takes hours to reabsorb.

Maybe I can't explain it properly. Maybe I'll just pull my sleeves down over my fists and resume my argument with Caleb instead, as last night we indulged in an angry, overheated, wordless reunion of forgiveness in which we let history decide our roles and he wore the bear suit while I burned him alive in my mind.

Guess I should have written out the whole thing, moment by moment and then wow, the whole world would have been so much happier.

Grateful for an early foggy walk on the beach this morning because the Devil decided to pick a fight and I never saw it coming.

Is he..kind to you? Caleb turns and stares at me, his eyes haunted. I would say maybe he's just mirroring my usual expression but this is honestly so much worse.

Of course he is. Jesus, think I'd be-

No, Bridget. That's not what I mean. Is he..is he violent?

Like you, you mean? He's slightly less rough than Sam but he's bigger so it's inevitable-

Oh my God-

I don't know what you're asking. 

Everything. I'm asking everything. I want to know what he gives you. How you feel. 

You've been there before. With him-

It's not the same! 

It is, actually. He doesn't put on a show like you do when someone else is around. 

What do you mean? 

You're not violent if there's someone else in the room. 

Bridget- His voice is strangled, muffled. I just want to make sure you're safe. 

Then bring back my ghost. 

Which-

YOU KNOW WHICH ONE. HOLY FUCK STOP PLAYING WITH MY FUCKING LIFE HERE. IT ISN'T YOURS TO HAVE.

I knew an entire household or three were on exodus as I screamed at Caleb. I guess I just don't care anymore. Appearances make no difference if he's never going to change. I changed for him and he won't return the favor and it's killing me.

Egos and outlaws.

He wakes me with a kiss. It's dry. My cheek burns from his lips and he says he has to go.

Can't, I say sleepily. I locked the door. 

August laughs softly. That's going to keep me in?

It's symbolic. You should stay so you don't wreck it. 

The night or your symbolism?

Both. 

He stares into my eyes without expression (or at least one that I can read) for an eternity and then my heart sings when he crawls back into bed, settling on my right, covers up over his shoulders, arms around me, spooning my back against his chest while Lochlan has my hands held in his, elbows up between us in dreams. I'm asleep in seconds and then when I wake up again, it's still dark out but he's gone. 

It's a new record, I only called him Jake once yesterday. I didn't say I didn't picture him as Jake though, just as fucked as ever, literally and figuratively while he tries to pretend we're good, everything's good and nothing is hideously unhealthy or wrong in any way. When pressed we'll throw out the 'consenting adults' excuse and back it up with a hard stare. When doubtful we make arrangements, promises to do better, be better, work towards changing everything. He tries to be more proactive in forcing me to see him for who he is and I steadfastly undermine his efforts with my hideous mind. He doesn't fault me for it, knowing full well I love and respect him for who he is and how much he means to me but then I close my eyes and the little hypocrite steps forth and sets it all ablaze. It's such a spectacle I can't even minimize the damage or tell you it's fine.

It's just something I'm working to change, albeit not hard enough.

And at the end of the day, he allows for it, which makes it even more difficult. When he puts pressure on me to change I will but only for him and then Jake barges in and overrides it all and August lets me get away with everything. We're not stupid. It's a dangerous game, playing with hearts and fire and history all at the same time. We're burn victims, heartbroken and revisionist and horrible and perfect all at once. It's intoxicating, debilitating and easy to shove under the rug as I slide forward mere inches and I am tightly against Lochlan, who recognizes in his sleep that we're alone again, turning onto his back, clutching me against his chest and side with his right arm.

Ten more minutes so we can have time alone, he mumbles and I nod into nowhere.

Can't get comfortable (let it go).

A little pressure relieved on the army at last as August emerges from his decompression exile, a light on the horizon, so to speak, and it hasn't gone unnoticed that it took him longer to come down from his trip than it did for it to take place, including travel time.

He wades into knee-deep water and takes my elbow, gently.

Come on.

This is fine. I am frozen solid and quite content, thank you. My army has relegated me to the ocean in my mind. At least this way I can pick and choose.

Come, Bridget.

What are we doing?

We're going to go out for breakfast and talk a bit and then we'll come back and make some coffee and watch a movie.

Really?

If you would like.

I would. I've missed you.

I'm glad to hear it.

Did you miss me? 

You know the answer to that. 

Will I be back home today? 

You know the answer to that too.

Finding a home along these crooked seas.

I don't know if we're building a midway park or not, for they'll say and do anything I want on any given Sunday before I remember that I still wasn't good enough, wasn't welcome, wasn't a force to reckon with, in the long run. My headphones are fused to my skull, I'm blocking out the world, feeling someone else's pain, letting my brain be stroked by emotions that only touch me via sound. And it cues up a mirror feeling inside, matching pain for pain before overtaking it completely and I no longer hear the words anymore, no longer can separate their objective pain from my deeply subjective pain.

All of it. I watch as the waves surge forward, higher and higher, fiercer, stronger, until the saltwater washes over me. She's only trying to help. She's trying to wash away my unintentional sins, my indelible heartbreak, she's trying to drown me to put me out of my misery.

I appreciate the thought, consider the efforts and the source, and press on, stepping back from the spray, disappointed when the music stops, headphones caked with salt and corrosion, head caked with decay and old memories that shouldn't have so much importance anymore but they do. The renewed silence brings the shouts and I turn away from the waves and see them coming. An army, deployed down the beach. Good. Just in time for B-day, storming the shoreline in the name of what's right. Centuries from now no one's going to mark it. Do we just die? Does it all just stop and then as the people who hold the memory of you die too everything just fades to black?

I hate it.

Lochlan's always the fastest, by virtue of being the smallest. It's a fact no one could ever deny, though he will tell you he cares the most and he will always get to me first. He's yelling something to me but he's only ten feet away and crashing into me, his arms out to pull me in just as my mind registers what he's been yelling all this time, his hoarseness masking the words.

Too close! Too close! You're too close!

As if I am a small child that's not listening. I suppose that I am, through no fault of my own. Caleb brings up that valid, undeveloped point on such a regular basis now in such a grand efforts to make and keep his amends and all it does now is serve to remind me ever so painfully that I'm not, nor have I ever been emotionally equipped to deal with Jacob and that Jacob should have known this and in his absence has put too much pressure on the army, too much responsibility on this army to deal with me, and it ages them before my eyes.

I close them so I don't have to see as I am violently crushed against Lochlan's chest, his arms a heavy vice around me, keeping the sea from her murderous thoughts, keeping me from mine, and his lips brush against my forehead and he says you're okay now, as if I am. As if I ever was, or will be, or might have been.

The Revisionists.

Reading about neural style transfer (God help us all) and The House on the Rocks, which I'm still not one hundred percent convinced is a real place, but we blissfully began Season two of American Gods last evening (at last) and I couldn't be happier.

The show is a masterpiece. It plays out exactly like my brain. Perfect. Everything is over the top and intense at the same time. It never once veers into campy or unbelievable.

What's on for today? Caleb picks the worst time to intrude into my thoughts. I have finished my coffee and went straight for the hot chocolate. Thanks Keurig. My robot coffee server is doing a brisk business on the countertop. I just need to find better coffee for it. The coffee is the only bad part of this, but at least the whole cup is useable. I got some Starbucks pumpkin spice but on it's own it tastes like you're licking the inside of a tire coated in nutmeg. With whipped cream it's fine. Only I don't want whipped cream for breakfast unless it's being licked off me.

I would like a carousel room. 

Decoration?  

No, an actual carousel room, and I show him the images on my computer from where I've looked up the not-quite-believable house.

Oh. We'll need to build a large addition. I'm not sure we have the space for that. 

It doesn't have to be the largest. Say one for five people?

One of the miniature personal carousels, like you looked at before?

Yes. But INDOORS. 

Outdoors would be nicer. Picture the lights on a summer night in the dark. 

You're absolutely right. Forget my idea. Yours is better. 

And less invasive. I didn't recall you being all that thrilled while the work was being done here. 

Where should we put it? Will they have to crane it in?

Oh, probably. Or construct it in place. 

Equidistant from the gazebo in the backyard? 

Sounds fine to me. 

Oh but WAIT. Instead of pinks and gold and cream and all the traditional colors, I'd like pewter, bone white and teals with green. 

That sounds incredible. 

Are we actually doing this?

I'll see what I can find. Bridget you ask for nothing and I've been wanting to spoil you for some time. You just never afford me the opportunity. 

What's happening? Lochlan comes in and steals my hot chocolate.

We're building an amusement park. But in my favorite colors?

We're what, now? Caleb looks surprised but keeps his game face on.

 If we start with a carousel we can add things as we go. A mini Ferris wheel. Then a rollercoaster. Playground-sized but reinforced so y'all can ride with me. 

Hell, I can have it done by the end of the week if you're finally ready for it. 

Lochlan grins. What a riot. 

Every day can be a day at the fair! I get all excited and then Caleb pokes my joy-balloon so unexpectedly I almost tripped over his next words and landed on my face. There's no air left in the room.

You can finally have the childhood I took from you.

Keys + strings (Not piano and violin, but keyboard and heart, my friends).

Sometime around when Ben first fell asleep (threeish?) he woke up soon after and picked me up, moved me to his other side and turned away toward the wall, pulling me in against his chest so that I am almost falling off the bed, tight in his arms, not in the middle anymore. The middle is my spot. The middle is where I live and he had a bad dream or a moment and here I am, wide awake and hung over a four-foot abyss where the Baba Yaga can reach me because you can't tuck the covers in if they're no longer over you and hardly any of you is actually ON the bed.

And then I promptly fell asleep because old times.

And I woke up like this. Still hanging out, mashed sweaty and sleepy against Ben who woke up seconds after me and mumbled something about why I couldn't just sleep in the middle and he was comfortable.

You moved me. 

And he laughed and I got a kiss and then he threw me back to the middle and he cracked his arm good to get the stiffness out and I felt a little bad because that was a DAMNED GOOD SLEEP, you know?

I don't think Lochlan noticed.

He was sleeping great. We always seem to do a little better once the warm weather goes away and the new fall routine settles in. But I woke him up anyway, because the previous morning he was surprised that I didn't. I tangled my fingers in his hair and gently pulled his curls out, rolling them long on the pillow until they straightened. Then they'd spring back and I'd start all over and after a few moments his lashes fluttered open and there he is. My Lochlan.

Morning. Where'd you go?

North of Ben. 

He laughs. And?

Maybe too far North. 

He pulls me in and frowns. You smell like him. 

Aftershave?

Deodorant. 

Gross. 

If you were taller and didn't fit under his armpits this wouldn't even be an issue. 

I'll get him to use my Chanel instead of Irish Spring then. 

That could work. Hey, what should we do this afternoon? (He asks because we garnered the worst of the chore list this week and must work first, play later.)

Eat leftover pizza and watch scary movies? (The local pizza joint takes pity on us and gives us free extra pizzas sometimes because we seem to pay their rent. It has resulted in sometimes having a fridge full of leftover pizza. This is Henry's dream come true. PJ's too.)

Done. And he grins sleepily and I reach up absently into the air.

You can't pause time here, Bridge. 

Oh, God, I wish I could.

Three of a kind.

You're a storm-surge, a tempest in a teapot. 

Nice.

It's true, Peanut. You swirl up and mow through everything and then quiet right down again and we're left to clean up the mess. 

I didn't make a mess. 

It's on the inside, he says gently. I know this but I fight it. I didn't fail to note, however that Sam used Lochlan's nickname for me. Sometimes PJ uses it too but usually they refrain. It's not them, it's personal. It's private. I can only be a circus peanut for one elephant in the room at a time, and you know what happens when you don't feed that elephant, ignoring it instead. It withers and wastes and yet it's still there. Better to feed it, acknowledge it and then when it's independent, set it free.

Caleb laughs at this only I didn't say it out loud. Sam hears the ire in the sound and takes the opportunity to escape. See you tonight, he says, mashing a kiss against my hair. I'm late. See you, Brothers, he says to everyone/no one in particular and heads outside.

Don't be rude, I tell Caleb from my brain.

He sips his coffee, eyebrows up. Which elephant is it today, Bridget? The one where you can't tell them apart or is it the one where you try to keep Lochlan separate but fail because he doesn't stand out?

Someone's cranky. 

I didn't sleep. 

I have something you can take for that. 

Indeed you do. But right now, I am also late for work. He takes his mug and heads upstairs to his mini-office for a quiet morning of overseeing his projects and I am left to my own devices. No kiss. No hug. I make a cup of coffee and start a fire. I take a minute and count my daily gratitudes and then I pick up my book for a moment, because no one will mind if I read for fifteen minutes.

Five words in and Lochlan appears over the top of my pages.

You didn't wake me? It's not a complaint but a curiosity.

You were so deep into your dreams. I couldn't. 

Should have. We could have stayed in for a bit. He smiles. What's happening?

Sam left for work. Caleb went back upstairs to work. I heard crashing around in PJ's room. He might be fighting the raccoons he feeds. We should check on him. 

If he doesn't appear by lunch we will. 

By then the raccoons will have picked his bones clean. 

Serves him right for feeding them. 

True. 

Want to go for a long walk? It's not supposed to rain again until tonight. 

Just let me finish my coffee first? 

Take your time. I'll go grab a shower and then wake up Ben. 

He's still sleeping?

Same. Deep in dreams. 

Aw. 

Right?

Sounds like the only one who hasn't had a good rest is Caleb. He's crabby this morning. 

He hates fall. It's too dark too early. He always has.

I nod, incredulous. They dig at each other. Lochlan could have said something horrible or even mildly stinging but instead he pointed out a very subtle reason for Caleb to feel that way that I never noticed or stopped to think about prior to this moment but he's completely right.

Barometre, post-deluge.

I miss the way you felt to breathe
And it fills me with despair
Stratosphere
You fill my lungs and take away the air

(I'm sorry, Sam but here's what I have for you today.)

 I am a thousand years and a day old. The line that forms between my brows when I weep has deepened into a river carving a path through my alabaster flesh. I stand on the edge of the cliff each morning as the sun rises over my left shoulder, highlighting my black clothing from my neck to the tips of my toes. It's as if life was a dress rehearsal for this time in my life, grief being a feeling I never thought I would touch with both hands, let alone cling to in the face of every last breath by this Collective to knock me off. I would let go but then I might fall, and I'll never let that happen again.

I'm a tiny apple-doll. A gnome whose worries expand and contract like a iron lung, heavy and imposing, frightening, this breath of mine shallow and panicked.

I don't know what I'm doing here.

Do you?