becomeone

my friend chark reminds me... snow's outside and i'm sitting hunchy on my steel blue stain-resistant hydraulic-powered armless chair on wheels, warm forced air not penetrating my fat down-filled screamin red bootie slippers.

(winter round here is tough. i've taken to wearing a hat and the booties to bed, still working on everything in between. i had to drop packets of "hot hands" inside the booties to fall asleep last night. now i press my toes of each foot into a packet, 10 hours later. they still work.)

i woke up around 11am to a shrill phone in the kitchen. dashed in a towel. celeste. letting me know she wasn't going to make it to the station for the interview. not a chance. not a spec of heat in her car. so i passed along appropriate telephone numbers,

looked outside.

holy--

now i'm here.
on the chair that i can wriggle freely along wood-slatted floor. heat pouring out of the metal grate, towel still pretty secure. heat rising. cold settling. sitting on my shoulders, the backs of my arms. i feel it on the tops of my clackitykaplacking fingers. the middle fingers especially. dkdkdkdkdkdkdkdkdkdkdkdkd...the cold keeps staying, won't shake off.

my skin, raising like ripples on the lake. arounding shoulder curving bicept elbow crook forearm and stop. wrists don't get it, hands either--they try to resist the cold, its grudge. they try to shrink from its insistence. move, i command them. work away feathery spreading chill.

when i stop looking at the rising bumps i can shiver. i look again: they raise again to meet my eyes. how many hills...

hands to my cheeks, my face burns my fingers. dkdkdkdkdkdkdkdkdk fingers to my lips, feeling? sensing? the pulse. lip heat disintegrates under pressingshock finger coolness. they do not melt together. they...experience...they...slow...they...shhhhhhhhhhhhbecomeone.