when i read my book, i think of you. not you as you are now, however that is, but as you were a long time ago, when you lived in our old house, in the big room, not the small one. i think of you by the window, or organizing the things on your desk, smoking, but never sitting in the chair. i don't know why, and i guess it doesn't matter.

tomorrow, i'm leaving here for my parent's house. we are going on a vacation, the four of us. paul is turning twenty at the end of march and i am going back to the alrete's for a month. grandad went out to play golf this morning, and came home with a potted shamrock plant for me. at nine, henriette called to talk to me about applying to her program. bon courage, she said, and the words stuck to me like a badge, flat and hard.

i have the funny impression that i don't look forward to anything. i'm not mad about anything. i just feel like i'm waiting for something to happen to me, like clothes on a line must wait. strung up here, i just watch myself, but it doesn't feel like me, it just feels empty and two dimensional. i watch my grand-parents, and think about how i'd like to be like them. they met on saint patrick's day and married when they were nineteen and twenty. my father was born a year after.

it is saint patrick's day. the year i was nineteen i spent the day with you and devin and david and steve. everyone came over after watching that rugby game and sang on the porch. i don't remember everything, except what a good day it was.