Down

Last night as I headed back to campus for a Physiology recitation, the moon perched in the sky, peeking through the clouds, winking at me, whispering "There is more.  There is more."  I had dressed in too light a jacket for the cold foggy day and wore the same into the night.  Sometimes, I like to feel the stinging cold air rip through my shirt and chill me to the core.  Sometimes, it's what I need to remind me that life exists outside the walls of this building, away from the formalin that leaps from an old, gray body to bury itself in my skin, apart from the pages and pages of text that I hunch over.  It heightens my senses, puts a snap in my step, pushes me urgently into these halls toward the tasks at hand.

I thought that Thanksgiving break would replenish me.  I thought that I could go home and be fully recharged.  Instead, I feel the pain of transition anew: parting is such sweet sorrow (again).  On my return, I discovered that those tending the fire had busied themselves splitting kindling and, on seeing me, dumped armloads onto the flame.  The heat is too much, is suffocating.  I want to wade out into the river and let the cooling waters pull me down, pull me down.