More and Less

It only took about seven hours to move the majority of my possessions to the apartment, a combination of foresight and strain.  Despite the usual late night Ceir/Wren hijinks, I suffered a fitful night of sore sleep, during which my various body parts carried parliamentary filibusters and refused to quiet enough to let me rest.

When I woke up this morning (despite my restless night), it was absolutely beautiful.  The sunlight had bathed my bedroom in amber and sage, and the windows I had left crack were issuing the lightest of breezes. There are few things more luxurious than fresh air breathed while under bedsheets, and I reveled in it for a good while before forcing myself to be productive.

I’ve managed to unpack and arrange nearly everything that I brought with me; while there’s still some stuff back at the house, I’ve gotten more done than I anticipated.  Part of this is because I have more space than I originally thought–while the living room is something of a tight squeeze because my computer desk doesn’t fit so much as intrude, everything fits acceptably without having to engage in a fine do-si-do of saw, sledgehammer, and duct tape.

Also a positive is that there is almost nothing wrong with the apartment. My toilet needs to be overhauled, and I previously mentioned the sink’s nastiness. The vinyl was replaced and looks great; really, the entire apartment is ridiculously clean and well-kept, and my walkthrough list is very short indeed.

Today’s poem is by William Greenway, from Where We’ve Been; a paeon to fragility whose last stanza I felt was beautiful.

Heart

He tells me I’m a risk:
he is small, blond, Mississippian. I trust him.
I am fighting my genes, he says, fighting
my father at fifty-two pulling off the highway
that had become a gray blur
trying to call to anyone from a phone booth
while it broke in his chest, calcified, knobby
like an ankle bone
and then again, over and over
in the hospital while doctors
ran up and down the halls trying to stop
that sequence of explosions,
that string of firecrackers.

You see yourself as glass
for the first time, transparent,
shaken and fizzing, a bottle
of soda, and start watching
for potholes.
Or maybe you just learn to live
with a cart with square wheels
thudding in your breast
trying to carry whatever it is
there,
before it’s too late.

This is how to become
old — worry only
about yourself.
So that if there come
bombs out of clouds
or lovers into rooms, saying
goodbyes, learn
how to cup your hand around it, as if
in a world of wind
there is this one candle
that must be saved.