On this day of fog, I have been straightening, cleaning, and slightly rearranging (my office, anyway). And now I'm sitting down to write, at last, with a cup of foaming hot chocolate fresh from the Cocomotion. It steams on my desk in a brown mug against the deep wood background. Brown. Brown to drink, brown to see, brown to feel. Brown on brown.
Hot chocolate on the day I'm trying to hydrate myself. I've been dehydrated for months, I think. Maybe years. I don't drink when I'm thirsty. I don't drink when I'm very thirsty. This is something to remedy. With water, not hot chocolate.
In the other room, the Saints and Cardinals play on, though the Saints are doing more playing than the Cards. This has been the fall of NFL. The year I fell for professional football. I've always liked football but never followed it, and I can't say that I necessarily followed it this year, but I've enjoyed my Sundays following teams yardline by yardline. Following the ball in the air into the hands of a receiver. And now I'm waiting on the ball myself. I'm here in the January of my last semester running down the field in a pant, arms high speed pendulums. I'm running, running. The sprint to reach the target of the ball, where I need to be. I am distracted by the screaming--my own, mostly--"go, go, go!" In this run, I manage teaching two different courses, working eight hours a week, my love life, my home, the Cottonwood internship, money, and the almighty thesis. It all must be done. It all will be done. And in four months, I will have my MFA and a new destination.
I am on the job search. The goal: editorial assistant at a publishing firm or journal. I'm on it. I'm ready.
And I'll take falling plates along the way, like the one that fell on my collar bone when I was shuffling a shelf earlier. It broke the skin, though it didn't bleed. It will bruise because it hurt, because it turned red. It will bruise, but now I know not to put glass plates on a top shelf and myself below.
