it's ok, have another glass of wine, girl, you have the house to yourself and there is much to think through, a cruely close self-inspection to torture yourself with. light another cigarette, it's better than food.

shhhh, reason, don't think about the fact that a can of soup and some popcorn is the only real sustinence you've had today. just inhale deeper, slide the volume bar farther to the right, let the wash of sound treat you to the emotional lubricant that you need.

this, almost without exception, is how i spent most of the night.

when i finally fell asleep, i dreamt of a cold, white, dead sea with a sky above it that ached for fire. i can still feel the cool softness of the sand under my feet, the wet limp air on the back of my neck. in my dream i had short hair again and i ran my hand over and over the nape of my neck, missing the clean feel of closely shorn hair there. my ears felt big without hair covering them and the only sound there was was the soft up and down of my breath. i could see the waves, but their poems were silent against the shore. i remember i got incredibly tired watching them and laid down in the sand, nothing to cover me, waiting for the tide to come in.

now, my stomach is burning, and my teeth are grinding, and i am most thankful for the cloudy sky. even though the sun barely broke through on the drive to work, i kept my sunglasses on all the same. i listened to an old mix tape on the way to work, last summer coming back to me, a tape i made for someone and never gave. stopped talking to them before i bothered to make the cover. realized as i watched the dark road spill out in front of me like ink on paper that i didn't make it for them, anyway. it was as if i made it for the idea of them, or rather, the idea of what i wanted them to be.

i can still feel saturday night's walk of the city in the arches of my feet and the length of my calves. it feels good. reminding me i'm alive.

it's already 10 am. i have been flipping back and forth between writing, doing work, looking like i am doing work, eavesdropping my co-workers to hear my name and reading about europe through the eyes of someone i don't know. from the quality of the light on the wall above my cube i can tell it's still cloudy out.

i cried last night and it was humiliating. and a relief. and, because i was in bed, it made my ear wet.

there is dirt under my fingernails. i wonder if the parts of me, my body, are really what make me up. they probably have far more to do with who i am than i would be comfortable with, me with my great love for the intellect and what i can do in my own private abstract conceptual space.

i couldn't find my cd wallet, the big one, before i left for work today. knowing i don't know exactly where it is is making me uneasy.