baby pictures

An old acquaintance posted a picture of his friends and their baby with anencephaly during his brief life.  The photo angles were careful not to show the missing parts of the baby's skull and brain, and I cried again for my friend and her husband, and I prayed they would have the chance to take beautiful, heartbreaking pictures like those, and I remembered my sister's baby who she never got to hold, dead before it was born, and I couldn't even cry.

unanticipated snow surprises me when I leave the apartment

.
this is what happens when
you say to the world:
leave me alone just for today
.

how you can tell the wind has been blowing hard

winter trees
like my hair
frosted white silver
only from certain angles

after the winter

This bleeding

heartbreaking
as it is

is a sign
that your body

is still
alive

after the winter.

Daylight Savings Time Stupidness

So on Monday, I sat in my cube in my new area, which has lots of windows up high.  I was staying late, working on some things I had decided I needed to finish.  And the sun was still up.  When the lights went out at their appointed time, I couldn't even tell.  And I had this thought: This is so weird; it's like all of a sudden, the sun is staying up, like, an hour longer.  I was puzzled.  I thought the change was usually more gradual.  And then I remembered.  That I had set the clock at work ahead just that morning.  Because . . .

Oh, Daylight Savings Time, I still hate you.

How long does it usually take you and yours to adjust and be less stupid?

Tree vampire

The trees were seeping from their severed limbs yesterday.  I noticed a puddle on the sidewalk, but everywhere else around was dry, and then I realized the tree above me had been trimmed around power lines.  It's been years since I've seen this happen.  This time, I gave in and put my hand under the stream and then tasted it. 

It wasn't sweet sap.  At first I thought it tasted like nothing, just pure water.  Then I realized that the salt I would normally taste on my skin was totally neutralized.

Today, I saw from the window that the trees were still weeping.  I didn't go out to check if maybe it tasted different today.  It's something I can only do on impulse, apparently, and not deliberately.

Maybe it's spring cleaning for the trees: out with the old water so the new can start circulating.  Or maybe it's more like a tourniquet being removed?

What makes them start and what makes them stop before they bleed out?  I'm sure science has the answer for these questions, but I'd rather just wonder.

a reason to take the bus

the problem with driving when it's windy
and the sun's going down is not

that your car gets buffeted around
making the drive white-knuckled or

that the light blinds you but that you can't
watch the clouds burning their way

across the sky because you are in the driver's
seat and you can't just stare at the clouds

Who knew?

It turns out that watching shows with lots of beautiful pan shots of deserts and mountains, explosions,  giant robots fighting each other, and pilots angsting over their lives is a good way to pass the time while you sort and organize your collection of 9+ years of OWCP injury files.  And playing shows with tons of potty humor and generally inappropriate content can help distract your mind from the rage as you figure out what to scan/bring when you visit the doctor one last time in an attempt to get a code added to your file.  Maybe I should have looked for something with more explosions because my jaw is killing me from when I must have been clenching my teeth while taking notes and marking things with sticky papers.

By this time next year, for better or for worse, pray that this fight is all over.  I don't want to deal with another year of this, even if it means the OWCP wins their game of trying to make injured workers give up on ever getting any real help and justice.  Just crush all my hope to atomic base components once and for all if it means I can be done with all this.  As I've mentioned before, hope springing eternal gets more head injuries from low ceilings than docile despair.

Miles once said, "I'm tired
of playing wall."  Me too, boy.
Me, too.