blank journals

i’ve bought journals almost like an illness

since childhood. 

i have many now. sometimes pasted over, words removed. sometimes forgotten. 

i find sentences written five birthdays ago about vultures

the garbage truck 

my own frustrations, suppositions, musings. 

is it any wonder that freely (perhaps not so much with settings and passwords) 

I have also many floating electric word repositories

from so many versions of my self. 

sometimes little snippets find me 

or someone else finds them 

“is this you?” 

“certainly not the me now.”

((I have ended employment with the company I began working for in early 2022 that required a non- blogging agreement. Even though work was only a scant measure of my writing better to be safe. life as a sole provider, always better safe than sorry.))

I am still living in the city I was in 2021. The kids still live with me, the dog, and now two cats. 

I recently took a job within two miles of home, a small community ER, mid-shift 12-12. 

I have begun volunteering for the animal shelter and joined a book group, though my visual focus from near to far and back again has made me primarily a large print reader  

I’ll still fight for a good story. 

perhaps at the urging of nancy, writing again may be a connection worth re-establishing. 

if you find me again i’ve missed you. 

if you find me for the first time hello. 

come in. take your shoes off. i find i am more informal with age. 

dinner tonight, which I cooked enough for mama and took to her, was chicken legs boiled first to create a rich bone broth and then roasted with potatoes, tomatoes, and carrots. Fresh baguette for the sop. 

reading: The 100-year-old Man Who Climbed Out The Window and Disappeared and A Spy Among Friends. 

internet out due to weather. a quick first scribble from my phone to start anew. 

here, 

now.

no longer a blank journal.