Daily Rescue #7 August 1st

1. When I woke up, I thought it was still July. I thought I was at the bottom of the month's drawer, reaching for a few more things.

   
   

   But it's August now, and I'm at the top of the days again. I'm dizzy from the switch, and I have this feeling I forgot something, someone, but have no time to check. No way to go back.

. . .

2. I thought a twig was brushing my forehead in the pool, a tree's hair falling in my face, but it was just my own, thick and stick-like when wet. (Or maybe it was my bikini string—light blue and rough-seamed, its tail too long, coming undone.)

3. I thought a spider was traversing my wet ribs, or another wasp who heard about what its sting could do to a woman one hundred times its length, a million times its mass—but it was a fern, growing over and past the roses, its feathery finger pointing down to my hip.

 . . .

4. I thought maybe you'd be working today, that you'd come in and ask for your coffee, no cream; your cookie, no bag. But instead, a man in a Hawaiian shirt is here: all he wants is a cup of ice. He’s brought his own cup.

5. I thought I was writing a book of essays; that I would close the door on today and walk the labyrinth back, then farther back, to where I started, and trace my tracks.

   
   

   But here I am, grabbing at today's cheeks, my hands full of this week's hair. Like Sarah Manguso, I feel I must take what I see, how it feels to me, and braid it into sentences— fast.

   
   

   I thought the past was where my life was, where the girl became the writer became the woman worthy of a life—memory, where she should go and stay and not come out.

   
   

   But I'm wrong. Or there is more than one writer in me; Or there is more than one place that wants me.