I have been up since 4 am watching Divorce Court. Struggling to breathe. At 6 am I switched to the news to listen to the world outside stumbling around in the fog while I edited photos.
There are 135 photos of Stop-Gap animation on the camera card. Beach created them the day I left her home alone so BC and I could help Conner and his little family move.
When I think about that day I remember the sadness I felt seeing Baby J's things poking out of a laundry basket strapped on BC's trailer. It was the fragileness of her world coupled with us grown-ups having no real way to explain to her what was going on.
Baby J is a little foreign creature who doesn't quite speak the language left to make sense of it on her own. Until time removes it all from her memory and there was nothing but here and now.
I had watched Baby J out of the corner of my eye navigate the boxes littering the hall and the kitchen; awkwardly accepted a beer from my ex-husband; Beach a few miles down the interstate at home in her room, in her imaginary world clicking away.
Evidently holding the camera upside down.
I've been pretty sick since that day. "Mostly" patiently waiting it out but yesterday [as noted] I escaped into the peace of my own footsteps.
At the gate blocking the snow packed road announcing its closure for winter were tiny flocks of people like me setting off.
As the road snaked the canyon they fell away behind me, hidden in the curves of the sun-starved canyon.
Out in the snow, I was sick but not slow. Today is different. Today is like Beach's photos- choppy and upside down. Today is like walking between boxes and the legs of busy giants. Today is like driving through the fog.
But before the news and hours of bad TV was a dream about the hospital, about the blue, about him, and about all the missing words between.
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