this is a love letter.

winter

these new little winter tics: making sure library books are shuffled and ordered and written down, marked "read" in a little notebook special for this. obsessively tracking each single calorie consumed with an internet program, trying to stay at least one full meal below the recommended 1200 minimum limit. stretching a certain way in the morning, each leg once, like riding a bike lying down. waiting, waiting for the mail i wrote to myself five years ago in psychology class that ms. pagano will soon send under the premise i've long forgotten it. mapping cognitively lemon, orange, lime, date on long walks through nice neighborhoods. missing something about seattle, definitely homesick for the atlantic, but refusing always to turn around. ghosts who were once real, true friends haunting early morning dreams & loitering the rest of the day, smoking imaginary cigarettes that still make me cough.

***
& the dull pain that you live with isn't getting any duller.