before this started, I had pulled tarot downstairs. the cards themselves meditative in their presentation even without digesting meaning  I was remembering the four of swords though I had pulled the eight. the queen of cups. wheel of fortune. ace of swords. to become the witch, become the sword. I was really trying to focus on one thing. wondering what media would help. remembering the time I tripped with all my guy friends at nineteen in their dirty apartment as some of them did coke on the table.  I grappled with cheating on my boyfriend with one of them. as I began to trip, I saw nothing but scary faces and ran to the shower. then back in my friend’s bed. one of them came in to grab me and said it’s just a trip, it will end. he coaxed me into the living room telling me of the time he spent half a trip in a closet and put on a surfing video for me to watch.  the way they were gliding across the water set to music; syncopated, sunny, and far away. unreal. surreal to me, their grace. I used to swim. a lot. I think about that as my eye falls on my favorite painting. I think should I be watching something. 

the painting says “Instruction” on one side and then the artist has taken wide strokes of her brush and painted a stream of red all down a letter, a letter to a love, so you cannot see what the original sender said.  then on the other side painted in black letters, “alter your behavior quickly.” an enlarged phrase  the artist picked out, magnified, this piece of advice. later I read the whole phrase again. I read the whole letter for once. then I let it swarm me. watching nothing. flittering. almost devastated by being forced in this bed, my parents a short distance I can’t touch–ripped from them, having grown so accustomed to being with them once every other month.

the letter says: “once more I advise you, if you have any regard for your quiet, to alter your behavior quickly. for I assure you I have too much spine than to sit contented with this treatment.” 

where am I? on an orange quilt, and in my summer backyard and hugging my father, oxygen tube in his nose. pawing at myself and obsessively; clandestine with my needs then suddenly running. contented with my lip growing fat from the pointy ends of others. the pointy end of me.