Ten.One Thousand, Three Hundred & Seventy-One

1. I shouldn’t wake up feeling this way.

2. Outside of the library is a cart full of brown paper bags. Inside each bag is a paper with instructions for a s’mores kit. Also included: one foil tin, a sandwich bag of jet puff marshmallows, a sandwich bag full of chocolate chips, and two small packages of graham crackers.

3. The sun is bright. It’s cool now, but I can tell it will be hotter later.

4. They always look so much older when the cuts are fresh.

5. He thanks me for the Google review.

6. “It goes right back to the idea of the Power of Positive Thinking, which is so strong in America because it fits in so well with the Poser of Commerical Advertising and with the Power of Wishful Thinking, aka the American Dream. It is the bight side of Puritanism: What you deserve is what you get.” - Ursula K. Le Guin

7. I start to do the laundry but I don’t have the energy to finish.

8. I sit on the front porch and fill in the last pages of the journal. A tiny black lizard keeps running across the wood planks. Every time it pauses, it bends its legs. It looks like it’s doing push-ups, like he’s trying to show off for me.

9. Another night of leftovers. We barely eat.

10. S’mores kit in the oven. Jurassic Park. One out of three.