in my house.

but i can't really feel the cold.

i just got back from driving my brother to work and it was raining hammers

and it was raining nails,

(to quote a genius),

and i was driving through the falling sky

and i was thinking about myself

and everybody,

and everything laid itself out for me like pieces of fruit on a table.

or a picnic blanket.

lush, sumptuous, raging personalities

artful and fine. like jewels and the sweetest things

all of us, garnet and sapphire and amber colored paint splashed against the wall like frantic exclamations of "i am here!"

and i thought about how we are all trying so hard, and we are all falling down, scraping our knees

and pick ourselves up again

and promise "i am changing things, starting now!"

and how sometimes we believe ourselves

and how sometimes we don't.

we find ourselves, arms wrapped around chest folded knees, head down, whispering failures and mumbling hopes

we take ourselves apart with finely tuned instruments, drawing and quartering ourselves, finding the ugly parts with such ease, and sometimes, such volume, that everything else just seems to fall away.

but we makes decisions of change and with slow flipbook turning we come more into view

i don't know that we have to get it right all of a sudden and right away.

i think all of us are trying, even though we are afraid.

but mostly,

i thought about how we find each other, and give each other new faces, and eyes light up and lips curl

and there is that moment, when you are lucky, when you are with someone who begins to see the lines of your map,

deep creased and sometimes hidden away

and the moment's like setting the best jasmine tea bag into hot water

and everything is that scent

and everything is that taste

and it's wet-kissed stamps on envelopes

sending yourselves to each other back and forth.

and with rain water slipping in through the open window, catching itself in my eyelashes

and splashing across my smiling lips

i took a drag on my cigarette

exhaled

and said thank you.