I curl and read in the bright three foot space between the attic and the window. This, too, has become an immoderate practice. Homer, to calm my tooth for apocalypse. Milton, to keep it sharp. The sun radiates off the page and ruins my vision.

Life on the eastern seaboard is slow. Days spent between the porch and the attic window. I have set a pillow in the window frame. I curl in the sun and blind myself on the radiant pages of my books. Last evening we went out to dinner with my aunt and uncle. I have little in common with them besides blood, but love them in a strange and childlike way. At the table adjacent to ours, an old and unhealthy couple pickled themselves and spoke rudely to the waitress. The woman coughed horribly, as though she were fighting a clawing death in her esophagus. She was corpulent and moved stiffly, she was unable to retrieve fallen things from the floor. The man wore a kelly green sweater and would order a new glass of wine before he finished the current victim. When they had finished, she waited on the curb while he drove the car around and got out to let her manage her bulk into the drivers seat while he made his way perilously to another car. He looked back once, steadying himself on a stranger's vehicle, presumably to make sure she had not fallen. It was not a life affirming moment for me, I came home and read Owen. I thought about war, and Shrewsbury.

In a few short days I dispose of this test and take a haphazard and somewhat untimely roadtrip. I believe in this, and all things good. My drawings of moths are multiplying and they grace most surfaces, pale yellow sticky notes of various sizes bearing not to scale night insects. Steadily, I finger the soft threshold of sanity.

I take all the old letters from the box and reread them for the strength that comes with remembering. Something calcifies, a belief in things which I should be ashamed, at my age, in which to still believe, things that I could not live without trusting. I put the letters back gingerly. There is a trace of pollen on everything I touch.