“”Have you eaten today?”

Email From: Anna 20XX Subject: [REDACTED]

“You love me. Real or not real?”
I tell him, “Real.”

― Suzanne Collins, Mockingjay

It’s almost impossible not to stop, which isn’t what you might think it means, it’s not. But restarting cold-starting—finding out it’s hard enough to read what’s in the lot already, loving it, finding inspired avenues to … it’s always a form of [reminiscence], missing. You’d call in anticipating, I think. [Can you guess] what the next line will be, what it means—am I actually trying to say what I think you’d like to think I mean? That doesn’t matter anymore. Remember, remember—remember the lives ahead, the laughs in café doorways escaping rain, skimming stones, the walks in parks we almost had, the paths you’ll think of taking, talking … leftwise, next time, it’s its turn. Your tree, you’ll get to show me next time, we have time, always … time. Then work tomorrow, I’ll say as quietly as possible, shall I do [REDACTED] for you, there’s no [REDACTED] and you’ll stare, unworded, you will not speak, you can’t—there are no cats to blame, it’s no one’s fault and I will smile—to myself and the empty screen, but somehow, you’ll fill it and nod and welcome me into your [REDACTED] while you use the smile I left on you desktop. So much to do, so many hours in the day defy the fucking notice to, please slow the fuck down, and the thought. Always the noise, always the competing voices.

It’s raining again, you like to say. But is it? I never check. It’s rarely about the weather—such is our shortest of hands, which grip our shorthanded vocabulary—shared idiolect (a kind contradiction we know well) are you going to finish? […] Your sentence, you may ask, but you all-may have already done it because, of course you have, anyway … it is a delight, sometimes creepy, even after all this time—we expect, even when we have no more expectations to howl. More a collection of, really[s]?  Are you comfortable, my love, is it still, “raining”, or is it just raining, raining. I see something on the way, but it won’t be as bad as it looks … it rarely ever is. And so, I drift to tomorrow, and the afternoon, snacks, the swatting away (so impossible with current parlance—you understand my hesitance to swipe at screens), sweets with Japanese sounding lines, meaning sounds (I wouldn’t think), but strange enough to be delicious … like the books. And I’ll share the books, or finish one, as I have done, for fun, a ton after ton after ton of ‘em. I shall. And then I’ll think of sleep—remember that? I think of you [REDACTED], and you can’t help but turn away, on your side, and make quiet breaths, some loud, but gloriously that side of conscious thinking. I always think it’s about time.

—JustD

Harry Ally–White Figure with Green Leg