Photo of J and S during our first real fall taken some time late October or early November 2025 in NY.

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I recently (January 2026) found something I wrote down without dating it. It must be early October 2025 because M is in NY. Calendars are important. In 2025 I mark(ed) time by the people I'm with. I wrote: "I made myself lunch this morning. I've been cooking, but only because M is staying with me. I only know how to take care of myself for other people. I only know how to exist when I'm being seen. I'm trying to name it. It's not that I don't have the words, it's that I have too many. It's not that I want to make sense. You've never heard such a sentence. Or I guess, you've never seen. Don't watch me. S and C are in the air at the same time. As in, S is leaving LA and C is returning to LA and M and I are on the L train stalling for the body on the track. I have no doubt we will make it home. I wonder what makes me so sure of everything. Or anything? We must not story ourselves. That's why I'm doing all of these long lines now. The shape of a poem strip searches. I keep saying I'm a poet. I'm making all these statements like facts are easy. Only and will and assured. The overhang of a line break looks obscene and silly this year like:

A gibbous moon
Forgot sought yawning arc 
carrot barren guitar 

But I love when people who don't believe in poetry say beautiful things.

C said the rat in our library was the size of the moon. Maybe it can be easy. Grind down. I said confidently that asking was more important than the answer. Everyone forgets the bad poems of famous poets. I seek it out. The nosechinbridgemouth. The why. The song under the tongue. The you, yes you, falling out of belief. You, God. You, cold language. You, heat trapped under the fabric of my jacket as I respond, as I never respond, as I eat, as I don't, as I say XXX XXXXXX, as I hide in my roomdark as someone with a boombox draws into the hardening cement below my open window. You are who I love, tired language, out of bed ten minutes before the graveyard shift. This is my stop."

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In the first hours of November 11, 2025, C and I are still up talking. C wishes for snow, and I'm absolutely certain that it won't-- I tell her so. The weather report showed no signs. It wasn't even winter yet. The last snow I'd seen had been in February, when something very short and sharp ended suddenly. The way it's difficult to believe in the immediate aftermath that you'll return to yourself after someone leaves with a part of you, I truly didn't believe that snow would fall again. And again.

That morning, C wakes me at 7am to the first snow of the season.

In 2025 conversations kept leading back to the summer of 2024 before I left for NY. A asking me on JT's roof what my favorite memory with a pool is. C and I agreed the summer of 2024 was the best summer of our lives so far. Fourth of July at C's parent's house, S juggling, driving to Laguna with more friends in the car than seats. In LA where it is summer forever, the summer of 2024 was my first summer that had an end date. Hard stop. TKTK Sometime in 2020 I wrote that TKTK

If 2024 was a straight arrow pointing out towards the future, 2025 was time bent into a spiral. I used to believe forward momentum meant departure. G said that anything worthwhile is something that is going to take years and years and years to build. And then on Halloween someone's life ended. TKTK

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January 9, 2026: S warns me this year the Horse will be returning to heaven for administrative work and will not be around to protect me but I'm not scared. Of anything. This city has taught me how kind I can make a cold winter. For lack of sun I will light the hearth. I am Californian and I love being Californian. I'm Californian and weather is never small talk. I miss the sun even with its hand on my head. With torrential rainfall we ended a drought last year. So strange to say it was last year. So I am grateful that the Horse is leaving. This year I will learn to protect myself without intervention.

And there was divine intervention. I would like to say thank you, but I don't know if I believe in God anymore, so I say it to everyone I meet. Thank you. Thank you.

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TKTK