it's the same smell.
the same sheets in this same bed, same window with the same curtains. it's all still mine, but further away now, somehow.
driving home over the snowbanked roads i felt i was coming home for the hoildays, and not just for a night. funny, how that works. it's like nothing changes when i get here. i sitll pick the same fights, retreat into the same groove.
she came home, he left quickly, they stayed up, i milled in the darkness. she said that she won't be able to stay here for a month. it makes me sad to think that nothing ever goes back to how it first was, how it is when you are a child. i look at my mothers face and i miss her. i'm not sure how much i ever knew her, really. she is a chimera, but i can read her emotions. i found a book that was a window into her young lady life, into her ideas and aspirations, and it was such a perfect secret thing to find. i am hungry to know more, but i can't ask. i know i will get short, slanted answers, never ones to satisfy me.
and everyone faded into beds of clean sheets and familiarity, and around me is all my stuff, things i have left behind. the room is still full, despite my absense. an old james dean calendar hangs above my head, and i lie here, thinking about the times i have brought people here, to share this single bed. i see a tuft of lint, a sewing pin holding it to the wall. it came from his jeans, so long ago, he who is no longer so much a a part of me, even though he wants it. his picture still hangs on my door, it's large and abstract, but i know it's him. i just like it for the way it looks, and not who or what it is. just lying here, addressing that poster, i am regressing to the point where i think that perhaps i should talk to him, to not allow the bridge to deteriorate so. and as i think it, a voice inside me screams no.
but i have to ignore it.

today i met a crazy lady. after a tap on the shoulder, she asked me the way to the market, and upon learning i was headed there too, walked with me. she corrected my grammar as we spoke, never quite certain if i was understanding her, which i was. she didn't understand a word i said though, despite the fact we spoke the same language. she was old, with frizzled hair. she told me about her dog, and how together they walk for hours, but she can't bring him out. the weather is flipping from cold to warmer, and today was rather mild, causing huge puddles of slush to congregate around the curbs. i bounce over them, but my companion has to step precariously. 'they should be cleaning the street,' she says, 'this city is never clean.' i, for one, see only snow and slush and puddles, no trash, and i'm certain that she is referring to the puddles. i ask her how she wants them to remove the puddles, something completely unreasonable in my mind, and she simply dismisses it, saying she doesn't know.
we arrive at the market, and she asks me what i am going to buy. i tell her i don't really know. she's not there to buy anything today, she tells me. instead, she is there to follow me around, and take voluminous amounts of the free samples, and ask the farmers redundant questions, cutting me off everytime i want to say anything to them about my purchases. she admonishes my choices, and sees other produce as superior. her presence makes me uncomfortable, so i race through the market. outside again, she comments on how the previous mayor wouldn't have let the city get to be such a mess, motioning to the piles of snow. she asks where i want to go next, and i say little india, and i begin walking slowly, and i see that she is not by my side, like i hoped she wouldn't be. she shakes my hand, tells me she is tired, and wants to make sure i know the way and that i will be ok. i wonder where she came from.

oops. i forgot to take pictures of my postcards. they were only line drawings of dogs, in any case. here i was thinking i only had to do one, not ten. but it was fun.

when your snot freezes, don't you want to touch it too?

i am a dreamer.
sometimes, late at night, i find myself looking at the classified ads to see where else i could be living, although my rent is paid.
sometimes, i make up conversations with people i see. i ask them questions, oh! what a rarity.
i like not being here.
i want to give someone my undivided attention.
i want so much, but i cannot choose.
...
there is a marble strip on the threshold of my sisters bathroom, the only one in the apartment. i like to look at it and wonder about things.