truly never so worklocked that in my wake lay more scratched redacts than poetry, but there it is and here this is and I'm not sure the it will count but it's the best I can do at 2am and 2am's the best I can do at honesty and, honestly, I don't know how not to say all of this so I try not to say very much at all-

Saving Time

Sister: Mom! Our Christmas tree is dead!
Mom: It's what? *looks at green tree concernedly*
Dad: It's dead.
Mom: *looks at Dad* What?!
Dad: *deadpan* They cut it down. It's dead.
Mom: I'm just going to forget that I heard that. It's like some sort of sick ritual.

I am wrapped in my childhood comforter,
and it is enough around me to keep off cold through cracks a century coming, a century like chimes pealing, peeling off, years falling away like leaves dropped and it’s still clingy autumn here:

but I’m building walls of books, too,
because in my bed they help to keep of the cold and for all its warmth Dixie sure has biting nights that even three years north of the Mason-Dixon have not yet taught me to love, and the books are enough, enough enough:

but I’m wooling my mind with words,
tangled like click, click, click I never learned to knit properly so I really should put these needles aside and just crochet, but it’s diverting to knot phrases in unfamiliar ways and everything here is so familiar that it’s a comfort, really, so I need these words to unwind me:

but walking these roads I feel at home,
in place, in peace, embraced, and sure as ever that my autumns will drop on red clay like it doesn’t matter how fertile the soil is I’ll grow here, dammit, and there’s nowhere else I’d rather be no other words I’d rather weave no, no nothing else I’d rather read no, no no way else I’d rather sleep:

but these are not my thoughts,
my thoughts are very different.