6.17

There were mice, I think, in the props. Mice or chipmunks, certainly. They're not there now (I didn't find them). I found their evidence. This box of hats had a gobbet of excrement bound together by urine. This box of blankets was worked through in tunnels, small teeth marking paths through the stuffing. This bag of clothes has been torn open and the dresses leaking out.

I have help to spread every item of clothing out on the stage in the open air. There's a hope in me that the sunlight will disinfect the disgust from the cloth. It certainly hasn't destroyed the disgust in my heart. The clothes are out. The props are out. And when I come back? It rains.

Only a half inch, I think, but it's enough. Essentially every costume on the deck is damp. I was going to wash them either way, but now they're activated. The musty smell from this pile is overwhelming. The grime from that one sticks to my hands. I'm angry with myself for leaving them out. I'm angry with Oregon for not delivering on its desert promise. I'm angry with the washing machines for taking so unbelievably long.

Someday, all my new props will smell like human clothing again. Not today.

6.11

I found, deep in a box somewhere (I'm sure), some small piece of us. My mind is crowded with "where is he now" and "does he still think about me" and the soft, evil whispers of "I'll never love again." But I'm the one who left him, aren't I? I deserve to be alone in this.
I hold up the piece of us to the light. It's smaller than I remember, though maybe it has shrunk in the dry of the box. I can practically see through it. It wasn't this transparent, then. It felt deep with mystery, then. I cup it in my hand as I walk about the apartment. It is light. I remember when I put it away, it bowed the shelves and I had to put it on the bottom with the atlases and geode collection, and even then it had a gravity. During the earthquake, you already know which bookshelf didn't fall. But that was years ago.
I take it now and put it out on the counter. It still holds its shape, but it's not perhaps the same as when I put it away. I can't look at it, so I do the dishes with it near me. I carry it into the next room and try to read a book. It's still there when I throw the book down, restive. I heave an enormous sigh.
There's an old specimen frame in the garage. I take out pins and spread this old remnant as flat as its crinkled edges will allow. I hang it in the entry above the console. It no longer mocks.
Picking up my keys, I go out. It will be there when I get back.

6.9 (nice)

My sneezes smell like turpentine. Sometimes, when I'm in a car with the window down, I'll sneeze out into the open air. But the rest of the time, I try to lift my shirt collar and sneeze into my shirt. It's disgusting, but wouldn't you rather all that be inside than out?
I sneeze three times, nearly every time. It blows through my body like a swift kick off a tall cliff and I'm left panting on the other side, my face inside my shirt with the sneeze. And sometimes, when I'm getting over being sick, or when it's early in the morning, or just exactly whenever it feels like it (but only sometimes), my sneezes smell like turpentine.

6.8

Your skin hangs off you in loose sheets, floating in the air like fabric in water, its edges corrupted and lacy and slowly going to nothing at the ends. I'm wading through the curtains of you, pulling swaths of hanging you, looking for the underneath truth parts, the self you label "you." I'm collapsing. I'm already losing my strength. I find hands where I don't expect them, obfuscated as they are by waves of ragged flesh. I'm off balance. You pull me in.

6.7

Alexi's eyes were sunken deep into the unhealthy-looking bones of his face. He stooped to pick up each piece of trash on the sidewalk with a slowness born of infinite deliberation. His pockets were full. He started to hold the trash in his aged fingers, skin pulled taught over knobbly joints, flesh pocked with old mistakes and the scars of accidents he had already forgotten. He spied a trash can on the corner and his pace picked up, arms shaking with anticipation.
A piece at a time, he watched his collection flutter down into the bin. I watched as he emptied the pockets of his pants, front and back, each pocket of his shabby coat, and began to pull apart the lining. Long strips of fabric, torn from his shirt, the elastic from his socks, an accumulation of bunched-up fibers ripped from his pants. Soon, he was reduced, and the can was full. He tottered off again, down the street, where I saw him stoop for another scrap of paper.

6.6

[How did this occur, you may well ask? I don't know. In fact, I do know, but I don't want to acknowledge it. Here goes nothing: we're back to daily blogs.]

Through the door, I can hear my father clattering through the kitchen before he leaves for work. The sun is streaming in the window, and I'm bone-tired, but I know I'll never go back to sleep today. I have a feeling behind my ribcage walls that I can't quite define. Something raw . . . hot? A touch of tearing? I think it's fear. I have art to create, and I don't work well on a schedule.