I'm sitting in the dark. The tv's off and the only light is from the fish tank. The only sounds are the hiss of the radiator next to me, the soft blues from the speakers, and the bell in the plastic ball my kitten is batting around the living room. I want to be poetic and spit out something beautiful and meaningful but the muses aren't whispering tonight.

I really wish I had a cigarette. Or I knew how to take good low-light photographs. I wish I was somewhere warm and breezy. Dusty summer breezy, not humid and wet. I want like the days when I'd sit on the rope swing in our dirt drive way. Barefoot, toes tanned and in the dust. It was just a rope we'd tossed over a low branch and knotted, smooshed an old courdory sofa cushion to. Think about it. Don't you miss the feeling of swinging, too?

I miss grass. I miss sitting on that tree swing and looking up and down our road and seeing nothing but green grass and flowers. Blue sky. The smell of chlorine from our pool. I miss sitting on the deck. I would sit out there for hours, my toes and fingers dipping into the cool as I studied from one red regents review book or another. I'd lay back on that splintered wood and stare up the northern summer sky and watch the birds fly by. I can close my eyes and see it so clearly. It was paradise. And I'm happy to say that on some level I knew it.

this weather depresses me. But when I am in my apartment and away from the windows that face the street I can pretend I am somewhere closer to the ground, somewhere with a car parked outside, grass growing, houses with white siding and red trim. I can pretend I am six again and pilling into the back of our pick up. Growing up in the country was a blessing. tonight i miss it. I miss my family. I miss the way things used to be before everyone grew up and apart. I wanna close my eyes and everyone is happy again. And I wasn't a days' drive away, far from everyone, alone and struggling to figure out what I want to do with my life. What the past 30 years meant and what the next 30 will be. Thirty years went by so fast. It makes me feel sick to know that the next 30 will too. I really like this sourpatch brat of a life I have.

why am i melancholy when i am so happy? when I am so blessed? when I am so gifted with opportunity and love and potential?

30 years. how'd that ever happen. but i'm so happy it did.