Lost power

In Montpelier, snow fell fast for days. By the time it stopped, I was knee-deep. Power outages. Wireless down. For several hours, no contact beyond the weak and intermittent data signal on my phone.

It was a wild week. After the snow, an earthquake shook the fourth floor of my building. Nature provides its commentary.

It didn't last of course.

The snow.

—

A. sits across from me and talks about his sister, her recklessness. I appreciate these glimpses. After, back at my rental, the conversation runs through my mind on a loop as I pack up my things. I am thinking about sisters, their complexities.

Now, in my hotel room, the family next door is arguing. I hear phrases, raised voices, some stomping.

"Natural disasters"

"We have to go down there now"

"The double comes with"

"I'll drop you off"

—

With a little space to think, to breathe, a break in the intensity of the past few months, I return to these fragments, trying to find a way back. Scraps of thought, abandoned.

Amid the ruins, a few lines to revisit, reconsider. A start:

You are always on display, you china doll, you morning flower. Downtown, you imagine throwing yourself into traffic. You want a house on a hill. You want a house by the sea. You want your mother back, or someone else’s mother. A better one. The men you meet make promises over drinks. They remember their own children, grown now, and how they wish they had spent more time. Someone says the word career and every bright light inside you dims. Your life is a wide grassy field. Your life is a windswept dune. Your life is littered with broken glass and pebbles and you have forgotten to bring your shoes. Instead: a bottle of wine and a bag of paper cups. 

When you dream of who you might become, you see an empty stage and everyone you have ever known in the audience, waiting. Your children can’t find you. Little hands reaching out. No one even remembers what they came here to see. Applause. Parting gifts. A houseplant, a little fish that will be dead before you make it home. Thank you for coming, good night. No one ever gets what they paid for.