A bottle sits on an empty table in an empty foyer. Noises are heard in another room. I appear to be at a party but have separated myself from the crowd. I’m drawn to the bottle. I look around.  I hear noises but see no one. To my left, a shadow of a man hands me a gun. I lose interest in the bottle and immediately point it at my temple.

The man says, “Well, that’s one way to avoid a relapse.”

I am at a party but it’s my house, except I’m leaving and moving into another house even though I just moved in. She is there and is being mean to me. Even with distance between us, I can feel her petulance, her annoyance that my stuff, my books, my posters, are littering the room. It is her friends that are here. I am quickly grabbing things: novels and picture frames and I can’t explain to anyone why I would leave this big house. I’m not upset but I feel rushed. Out of nowhere, she comes up behind me and shoves me. Ready with rebuke, I twirl but you grab both of my hands from behind. You lead me into a bedroom. You are holding me with all of your might and you are saying, “relax.” The pressure you put on my body is soothing like a weighted blanket. Without explanation, the room has a bathtub and we are both in it and you are holding me down. I am breathing and becoming relaxed. This part feels like a daydream, not a dream but my imagination. Everything leading up to it felt out of my control until you walked in the room.
I wake up sad. I don’t try to guess the time. I turn over and look at my cat, content just to be next to me.
“Let’s go make the beans.”
But as soon as I say the lie, my eyelids shut and I am taken again.

I am in a lake, inexplicably and Jacob is there with some others. We are all in the water but I am the only panicking. We were on wooden logs of some sort but now they are sinking. With each grasp, the wood slips out of my grip, pushes further down. I  can reach the bottom but am scared of it and I am clinging to one, treading water, trying to will my body on this thin piece of bark. As it turns over again, I realize, not only is it just a scraping of a tree trunk incapable of holding any weight but there are in fact, nothing but sticks in the water. Where I saw boats, planks, safety, there really are just twigs and pieces of branch and nothing to hold. Where I saw two alligators on the bank, I see a ripple in the water coming towards me.
I guess it is about 11 am when I wake back up. I am making it up. All of my clocks were electronic and the phone has been dead for almost twenty four hours. Genevieve is still purring next to my face, practically sitting on it as she does every winter. I am still complacent, wrapped in everything I own. This is depression.
“No, it is cold.”
Rolling to the side, I nudge the cat a little causing her to look up in alarm.
“Are we eating today, Genevieve, or are we skipping?”
Facing the window, curtains closed, I hear some ruckus outside. Yelling, but can’t decipher it, and laughter. Sounds like cars starting up and down the block. Good. I’ve always wanted to live in a mansion in the sky, have a block to myself, have everyone’s stuff in a closet.
“They will come back when I’m ready.”
I shut my eyes, thinking of the first time I saw the alligator running towards me. Frozen in place, I squinted, not able to believe it’s size, it’s stature. It wasn’t just large but faster than I imagined and I was stuck near a large tree, watching it. In crisis, I can flounder, sort of vacillate between ideas at a rapid rate without picking one fast enough, and squinting. That’s what I do when I’m turning it over. I was not debating whether or not I should climb up the tree, a viable option, but whether or not the beast barreling towards me had crooked teeth. I wanted to be sure it was an alligator not a crocodile. Certainty has always mattered to me. And to the sound of the gravel, then the pause, then the gravel, then the pause, my eyelids flutter with a rhythm too; a motion to move too. I begin counting sheep before the last car pulls away. I hear a yell, “Anyone here?”
“No one answered.”
“Ok, then let’s go.”
 I have a cat on my neck, fifteen blankets, three cans of cat food, one banana, five cans of beans, one can of tuna, some wilting brussel sprouts, four bags of lentils, not a single time piece in this townhouse nor a single friend in this town.

January 11 2020

The apartment kind of moved like a wave, several, in fact, like a very small ocean grew from the carpet and each wave lifted me higher to the ceiling. Stuck on crest, I was anchored in the vibration right before the crash, high, the depth, the shock of being carried like that. I began to shake, ponder imminence, posture motionless, posture God, and then enact policy about it. I began to talk to me like this. You began to hear noises; check to see if it was the cat making them. You began to see slaughtered pigs at your bookshelf and the oven timer goes off in the middle of the night. You began to feel lethargic, take naps and wake up to apparitions in your doorway that kind of resemble Alex but also kind of resemble a human alligator. You hugged a small child at two am in your living room with no recognition of waking up or walking there. You began to chant his name. An upswing of movement takes over your legs; an endless urge to pace, to walk far. You began to wrap your body in layers and move things around; build shrines, hang postcards you had written to yourself like a map. The mother in you moves objects out of pathways for safety or tosses things over the bridge for luck: the coconut, the pearl necklace, the limpia leftovers. Your mouth keeps spilling his name and I love you and the euphoric laughter is the dead giveaway but life goes on. Fiddling, you shake. A nervousness begins.

You used to run around without a thought, numb, flask high. Once you ran to catch a plane but now you have responsibilities, an on time-Uber, a packed suitcase and passport. You began the slow climb to the emperor, responsibility, flossing daily and making lists. The euphoric laughter should have been the dead giveaway. The endless spinning and baths or the way you told him I can’t stop telling your friend I’m in love with him. You wore a red flag costume to the party but you maintained some composure anyway. Took some time off and a pay cut. Hugged yourself a lot. People really didn’t notice the muttering, the way you had to check things so often. You began to guess with 95% accuracy but hedged things to show effort. You were improving in your devolution. The night time became thick and mossy but during the day, you willed results; showed up early with coffee, felt responsible for your own volition. You showed up to the airport four hours early but ended up in Moscow anyway. These things really happened to you. Let go. These things all really happened.

Half has been burned the day your altar caught on fire for the third and last time but you still have the fortune from the cookie the flight attendant handed you:
“(Inscrutable?)”
I was awoken by Russian.
“Would you like a meal?” she repeated in English.
I had not planned to be on this Aeroflot flight on May 29th from Barcelona to JFK so I had not ordered a vegan meal. My meal had been eaten the day before by the famished traveler or curious Spanish tourist. Listless, probably actually starving, I decided to eat around the meat. I was only three hours in and trying not to count the full sixteen on my hand. I ate some spinach thing and a little cheese and a biscuit with butter, cheating. Who cares? I ate the fortune cookie last. I didn’t know Russians were so preternaturally oriented to include a chinese superstition but then again,  I was melting into the seams of my seat so maybe I was reading everyone wrong. It read
He who stands at the place, goes back.
You begin again without pettishness. You say thank you to everyone anyway, honestly, being raised that way. You begin again with a prescription and the same chant.
“These things really happened to me,” is the first thing you plan to tell him.

I hear a knock on the door. It is probably ten am and I am under ten blankets, clutching my journal, remembering the way edges begin to rip, slowly at first and then all at once. The way they crack with heat or freeze; either fizzle red and spark, burst then  settle away or break apart so clean and sharp to frosted fissure. The way you weather yourself like this: tense, under blankets, ignoring the pleading and loud “Hello” at your door.
“I don’t think anyone is home,” a man says.
“(Inscrutable).”
“Ok, let’s try Dave,” the man says.
You pull two pillows over your head. You let the cat nest in your neck and close your eyes to a very steady purr that neither ceases nor slows in winter. You’re warm enough. You’re back in the trough and coughing. You’re anchored in crisis, looking up. You’re breathing. You’re almost luxuriating in it.

freedom will teach you how
to stay in all new ways.

January 10, 2020

I do realize that documenting this arctic time is to my benefit, and I’m alone in this house. My house is full of windows. During the day it is flooded with natural light.  I don’t use any candles until about 5:30 pm and I am grateful for that but the storm has turned. The sky is gray, nearing black and it is only, I guess based on instinct, eleven am.  I want to hide from my street so I close my curtains off and on all day. Frankly, this signals anxiety but I am a hidden moon and my neighbors are obtuse. I conserve sometimes, when I feel adequate, I am able to conserve.I have lit only what I needed. I am quite panicked and terrified to talk to my neighbors or go outside after the riot. I read, and this is before my phone died, that riots had broken out all over the city and tons of stores were looted at once. I really missed my chance. I pace now, eager to connect, frightened by the sky. Turn to my cat licking herself on the floor, her leg raised and pointed mid pirouette. She has already adjusted to the nightmare.

I peek out the window to see my neighbors gathering. They will knock. They will check on me. I have not said a word to anyone since I moved here but they will knock. I peek, I see them, their bomber jackets and beanie hats and strong accents. That’s how I identify breeds. They are wearing Eagles jackets, two of them, and Eagles hats. I giggle and turn to look at Genevieve.
“Get in my truck, I’ll take ya, Jim.”
“Ya, alright.”
“We gotta go down to Bob’s first, alright?”
“Well, they have a back up generator. Him and Margie, they are set, they can ride this out. I gotta go check on Mom and Bob and then you wanna go check on your Moms too. She’s where? Wynnefield? I don’t mind.”

The doors open and shut so the voices become muffled quickly. They are yelling right outside my window. I see the red pickup parked neatly to the curb right outside my house and shut the curtains. I snicker some more at their caricatures, unfettered for a moment, feeling almost light enough to open the door and say “Hey! Remember when we didn’t riot for the super bowl! Now’s our chance!” I’m so close to doing this that my left index finger is actually grazing the chilled brass knob. My hips are turning toward the exit.  I am almost reaching their conviviality through this wall. But I turn towards the table where my phone sits instead, lifeless. If it was powered on what would I do differently? I linger there, listening to the engine start, to their friendly bickering, their unctuous need to help each other. I am staring at my phone. I am turned towards the front door but looking back at my dead phone. I am feeling a dull sensation in my hand. I am feeling the constant callous on my palm with the right index fingernail as my hands are curled in, balled into fists and my own nails are poking the skin. Without realizing it, I had been clutching the curtain at the bottom and have balled it  up into my fist. I release and watch the wrinkles set. Another problem. Hear the gravel under the tires and the pause, the gravel again, the pause, the steady whirr of the engine and the radio suddenly click on loud as the two men leave me. A radio. Those city sounds you get used to: how you know a car is backing up, then turning the wheel, then backing up over the gravel, then the pause before the final execution. The radio. The battery.

Still near the front door, I am waiting for something. I am squinting to feel it, remembering there is a flashlight in the basement. My head is facing the floor and I am seeing it, buried in a box, a white box that says “misc” in my child’s handwriting on it. There were no batteries in it.

“Fuck.”

That’s why it’s in the basement. Turning suddenly, I nearly step on Genevieve’s tail but hop over it using the wall to steady myself and begin humming; an old habit. Genevieve quickly joins the dance. We skate over the hardwood floor on my way to take a final inventory of the kitchen. She prances behind me and under me meowing for food. I am humming and looking at her, beaming. We have already adjusted to the nightmare.

January 9 2020

What I do in my own leisure is nobody’s fucking business.

I drew flames coming out of a window. I don’t remember what I drew first: the flames or the window. 

January 8 2020

I take inventory: four cans of wet food, almost to the bottom of the dry cat food, one half bag of litter. I have water, gas, just no electricity. I have two bananas, one soy yogurt, a cup full of oatmeal, a handful of raisins, three cans of tuna, some frozen broccoli, brussel sprouts and flounder, and a few smoothie mixes. I have popcorn kernels and coconut oil and tons of seasoning. I have tons of beans but unfortunately, most dry that I have to soak which I decide to do now. I had just gotten one of those long lighters and begin to light the burner. 

It’s 6:16 and I still have no power. I can’t charge my phone so I am trying not to use it. The entire city is out but so is the majority of the East Coast. I must have misread the earlier reports. The northeastern seaboard was sparking like we were and now they are saying it’s the entire coast.  I should have gotten more cat food. This is a good lesson in selected starvation. At varying times in my life, I was able to restrict my food intake due to financial circumstances.
“At least I’ll lose weight.”
I have candles but I should get more. I have fifteen blankets. For now, a gratitude list: gas, water, Genevieve, cat food, a transmutable God I cling to.

January 7, 2020

Right before it hit, I was at my most lucid.I had begun guessing with a 98.5% accuracy. I knew I was off about a couple of things but I felt secure in what I did know, and next to my scrawled sequoia, I began to list them:
1.The bugs that had descended the trees had all frozen so I didn’t have to worry about killing them.
2. The power was out on almost every block.
3. I use intimidation as a tactic to seize opportunity.

this is your death stroll,
you used to dress up for it,
now you take it as it comes,
easy, waiting but
walking. 

The news told me that everyone was having trouble with their power and that it would be on soon. The news reports stated that they were “working on it.”  I had power. I turn the corner to go to Target deciding it’s time to get some things, whatever I could carry. Eidetic memories require a visceral experience to later recall. So when I feel the drop in stomach later, I remember the black street and the way I turned left with optimism, which is my usual manner of going to the store. Later, when my chest tightens, I can also recall how  the entire complex was black, guarded by police and it appeared from a distance that they were turning people away.
Unthwarted still and with need, I tucked my hands in my pockets and kept going. It was twenty six degrees and I had to get cat food and some basics: soy milk, oatmeal, some fruit, maybe some more beans. My hood and hat were on and my scarf was tied around my face so things were obscured. Today was windy and the wind cut and whistled and masked things. I kept my head down but I heard them. I heard shouting. I neared and I saw mobs of people then. Where I had just seen a few, I saw mobs of people and tons of police cars. I heard shouting, “batteries.” This was no gallivant.  I heard “fuck you.” I need cat food. I heard “water.”
“Oh fuck.”
I decided to turn back heading towards the center of city. Later, when I hear the car backfire, I will recall how fast I can run even though I always say my knees hurt. I will recall the thrum in my palms as the surrounding area begins screaming. I will recall the way you only know what something is by context. Sound is deceiving. When I hear the car backfire, I will remember the way I knew the difference by how many times a gun can be fired without stopping.