This is not an exit

Once upon a time.
A snow covered graveyard, deserted and abandoned in the frigid weather.
A bar on a blizzarding sunday night.
There are bodies and darkness and songs and shrieks and blood.
Once upon a time it was New England and the light filtered through its own sadness so effectively people didn't realize they were stooping until one morning they realized they could smell the frost in the earth at their feet.
It is winter, which always makes me think of survival, desperation, just getting by.
I do internal inventories, place this month against its older sister from last year. Where were we? What did we feel? How did we sleep?
I am plagued by dreams. Rich, wildly colored, multi-layered emotional dreams about purgatory, demon women with black and green hair named for towns in maine, planes and abandoning those I care about, and kissing, which in dreams is such a bizarre experience anyway, meaningless and confusing and angry and elating all in a moment.
A small apartment bathroom at one in the morning full of honey scented candles, droplets of red wax on the white porcelein, water so hot it makes you a little dizzy, a half finished glass of red wine, a book about monsters, a head teeming with ideas, a tired, useless body in need of drowning.
Bob finished reading american psycho last night, and the examination of the book again, has led to more dreams; a museum of disembowelment, a wife, a cabaret full of velvet light and velvet piano music.
My laptop is dying. Like many things, its life is coming to an end, and I race it to its destination, writing furiously, saving the last four years of my creativity to discs which, when tested, turn out to be blank, transferring files to email to send away, to send back to myself. I am so scared of losing all the work I've done since college. Not that I have any illusions of it being remotely good, I just can't stand the idea of losing all those possibilities.
My skin is so dry my knuckles split if I make a fist.
I tumble around rooms, streets, houses, days, the sunlight alternates between dazzling white and pewter. I feel a swelling in my chest, hope is there, and I cannot stop it.
A man stepped into a position yesterday who may in fact be able to put a tourniquet on the gaping wound of this country.
People smile.
People shovel. Shit. Snow.
Shrug and shovel.
Put their shoulders to it, and sniff the ground and say, maybe, maybe I need to do this so something grows to meet me the next time I'm flung down this low.
There is so much I want in this year.
What is dangerous is the thought that we might actually do it.