It looked like a sea of leaves.

I've been a little bit weird. 

I get lost.

I've always thought it might be nice to be somebody with a lot of people in my life; one of those women who have an open door, who have friends who stand next to them at the kitchen counter. 

I look down, too often, though.  I focus on the mess of strings in my hands, on picking acorns out of the mud of the path, fastening my bike to the rack.  I make plans that take us away for the weekend.  Sometimes, I feel like I've forgotten how to be easy and open, how to welcome.

I sleep in bed with my girl, and wake up with a stiff neck in a universe of quiet of love.  I have breakfast with my kids, plan small things like weaving placemats out of paper and picking strawberries before the sun climbs too high in the sky.  I dig little holes in my garden and place my tomato plants on their sides.  I know everything about the root of a tomato plant, about the place where the fruit touches the branch.  The green bruise left behind when I pull off the stem.  A little circle of space where the plant gave life to the fruit.  It's closed and darling and smooth, like the place on my baby's belly where she used to be attached to me.

I know too many things about slugs and potato bugs, about salt and crushing berries against the bottom of a stainless steel bowl.  I know all about loving people, and about being far away.

When I became pregnant with Scouty, I had spent roughly ten years alienating myself from all of the non-drug people in my life.  Some of them, like my family, rolled their eyes at me, woke up in the morning annoyed.  Most of them saw me through a pane of watery glass, like I chose something other than them.  I did.  I chose something other.

With a baby in my belly, I also had no choice but to immediately cease contact, even casual contact, with everybody who had ever seen me stick a needle in my arm.  I had to close my phone, move into the country, and never talk to those people again.  People who lived under the glass.  They weren't a part of my life, anymore.

Sometimes women talk about losing themselves in motherhood.  I was already lost. I haven't suffered loss.  My hobbies haven't suffered.  I didn't give anything up that I'd want back.


Maybe I meant to sit down and write an apology.  I'm sorry that there are weeks between my calls, that sometimes, I am faraway, that I seek out spaces where I can lift my hems and pry up river rocks until the sun is golden through the trunks of trees and I'm running out of time.  I was alone for so long, it stopped being lonely.

I'm a person of green spaces and roots that grow along a stem, of being caught in headlights, talking to myself under the moon.  I made up the world a long time ago, and it looked like a sea of leaves with a thousand whispering voices.  I tie string to things, keep bits of yarn in jars.  And I love you.

-