Ten.Eighty-Three

1. "It's really dark," he says.  

2. The earth is tilting on its axis and so now the sun rises over the rooftops in southeast corner of the home. I stand on the front stoop with my hands on my waist and watch the colors come. Grays and hot pinks and unnatural shades of orange. I always feel like once I've settled on a point, my world shifts and then everything looks like it's burning.

3. This first week home has been about ease. Everything they've eaten in the mornings has come from a box. I don't feel bad about this. 

4. I run to target and buy a package paper—750 sheets—and a white three-ring binder.  

5. We meet at my local coffee shop. Iced decaf and a Rice Krispie treat for me, hot cappuccino and apple crumb pie for her. We walk down to the river's edge and sit on the bench underneath the shade.  

6. We spill our struggles, spread our encouragement to one another, talk about making a gathering space for women like us who are trying to do work like us. Webtalk about changing the words we use to change our truth.

7. I have to keep refilling the printer with paper. 474 pages. 

8. I figure out a way to make her and the desert happen. It's just that the blessing doesn't feel like it's been fully given.

9. We talk for two hours. Usually we can go on for 4, but it's late and I feel a cold coming on. We talk about safe spaces. Where are they, exactly?

10. There is no blessing. There is no her. There is no desert.