both hands

This last week has gone by too quickly. I wrote and revised, read pages and pages and Friday night, when I was just having a god-awful night for no good reason, my stranger took me back to his house and gave me a massage and cuddled me until I feel asleep.

Just after Brian died, I started having these nightmares--I was afraid to go to sleep for a week, just because I didn't want to have the dreams. So Darren invited me down to Edinburgh and he watched me sleep, to keep away the nightmares. I don't usually ask for help--not first. I always like to try on my own.

With my stranger, there was a degree of complete surrender I've never felt before. Maybe we say this every time we're in love, but this does feel so radically different from anything that's come before. It's simpler. Even when I'm in such a bad mood I'm picking fights left and right, he can curl himself around me, and all of that anger deflates. The first thing I want to do when I wake up is make him coffee and sit outside smoking hand-rolled cigarettes with his arm around me.

"Saved"
"Ghostfish"
"The Ossuary in Paris"