all homes are temporary housing when you remember we are mere mortals

1969 Vietnam ain't so far, is it?

What is your heart taut with, dear—  

what keeps you silent,  

looking over and past my shoulder  

as if assassins wait behind me,  

bows drawn and waiting  

almost as tensely as you,  

perched on edge,  

unsure what to do next?

Me too,  

me too. Perhaps there was no  

next step, no bend in the road—  

only the wet bog marsh  

where I imagine us lying,  

as you once did, patting mud  

around your young body for warmth.

You were somewhere  

you’ll never go again,  

when everyone was new  

and, for a moment,  

the world felt too big for you.

But now your back aches in bed.  

Your shoulder curves  

as you slump in the chair.  

You groan when you stand,  

filling the air with noise  

to remind us you are still alive,  

still fighting—

but no longer sure  

what for.

a thousand letters

This is basically a journal entry.

This is basically a journal entry. There is no mediocre attempt at prose, no literary air, no pretending I'm a writer. This is just a girl and her diary vibe.

Just got done doing yoga and now I'm taking a bath. I had "take a ritual bath" as a goal for June, but I guess August 1st can count.

We secured a housesitter, paid and booked, though it never feels secured till the day of, when they are in the house, with the key, and we are sayonara, peacing out.

Actually, that's not quite true. It doesn't feel secure till the moment we are back, because I worry the whole time they're there.

And while, for a moment, I had grand notions that we would arrive in Florida, spend five days—one day for travel there, one day for travel back, and three days to look at houses—the reality is most likely this is just a recon trip. See some houses, see neighborhoods, go to the grocery store, swim in the hotel pool, go to some AA meetings, and get a feel for the place we want to live.

But if I am being transparent, and there is no reason not to be, we only had two people even look at our current house, and both were a solid no. Didn't even look at every room. Now, we have it overpriced. And of course we currently live here. And the economy. The economy! Why are there a handful of houses, nicer and cheaper than ours, in our neighborhood, for sale and vacant?

Now, if we found "the right house" in Florida, we would buy it. We could float two homes for a while. Heck, we talk about being a two-home family, winter and spring in Florida, summer and fall in Indiana. But it's mostly talk.

But whatever, we need a vacation or whatever. We've only been out of the house a total of ten days since we moved here in 2022. Yeah, ten whole days out of this house in four years. Maybe that's a small source of my hate for the house.

And the leak in the guest room that we've poured money and workers into with no resolution in sight. And the flickering light that the electrician is supposed to fix.

My goodness, listen to me.

I should probably also mention that life has been awesome too. At least more awesome than it's been in a while. I seem to be tapping into some energy I haven't felt in decades. Like a touch of teenager. Maybe.

I started really doing a full skincare routine every day, twice a day, a few months ago, and my face is clearer than ever. I wore makeup more this week than I did in the last three years. I googled contouring for round faces and ordered teeth-whitening strips.

I have been feeling hot. Desirable. Wanted. Captivating. Mesmerizing. Alluring. Irresistible.

Wearing pheromone perfume like who the fuck is that?

Sometimes I feel like a domestic goddess, and I won't go further into that because it's exactly how it sounds. Steak dinner, fresh-baked cookies, apron over my dress with no panties on.

Spritz spritz and a dab dab of that pheromone shit too.

And sometimes I feel like I should learn how to sharpen knives and shoot shotguns and wield nunchucks. It would be nice to have some aim with a throwing star, don't you agree?

I just feel alive in a way I haven't in a while and, earnestly, sometimes want things I had long ago packed in the back of the closet, just never got around to taking to the thrift store to donate. Life, not living, but just life, got in the way. Life like paying a mortgage and calling plumbers, not living like dancing in the office and making up pet names.

My husband says that when the time's right, it will happen. I know this is true.

For the move, for everything else too.

In a small way, I am slightly relieved. No pressure to find the right house on this little vaca getaway. Something about where I'm currently at, where I've been, has got me thinking that maybe there's a surprise around the bend if we stay where we are.

I feel like I'm hurdling toward something, and I don't know what, but I want it and I like it a lot.

An Inventory of Things That Might Mean Nothing

I don't want to be the type of person who can only be inspired when I'm sad, hurt, or angry. I'd like to feel that same fire when things are good, calm, or when I'm just riding the waves. You know, where I am right now.

It's not always easy to ride the wave and not care what shore it washes up on. Matter of fact, I'm failing. Maybe not failing. Struggling. Fighting. Trying to just ride and not care where it ends up.

It's stupid little things.

Like, I made a big step. A big step for me, at least.

I texted someone from the neighborhood.

Met up with her for ice cream.

Talked too much. Mostly about me.

I needed it, though. No regrets. YOLO, right?

I needed to talk, and talk I did, I guess. We talked about her too. She even gave me a book—an extra copy she had of one she thought I'd like.

And I was bolder. She texted me afterward, and I sent her my Instagram. You know, in case she wanted to follow me. I don't add people. Not often. I'm not exactly a private-private person. That would, in my opinion, be someone without social media. But I am selective. Guarded. About who gets access, and even about what I share.

She requested to follow me. I approved.

So, of course, I requested to follow her back.

She didn't approve my follow request.

It felt like a breach of the social contract. 

I approve you, you approve me. 

We're sharing together.

Maybe not.

Maybe she looked through my pictures.

Saw the stupid collages I make.

The flowers from the backyard.

A couple of shots of the cats.

Decided she'd seen enough.

Or maybe she just forgot.

Maybe she just didn't open the app after she requested. 
Doesn't even know I approved.

I keep flipping to the same greyed out "Requested" button. 

The 134 followers (I'm one of them) 

and the 274 following (of which I am not a member.)

And the 210 posts not for me.

I made myself visible, and I don't know what happened next.

Last night, I couldn't sleep. That was abnormal for me. Hours awake.

This morning I texted her: "Thank you for listening. I didn't realize how much I needed to talk. I'm excited for the book."

Still no answer.

No follow approval either.

God.

I'm becoming something I don't like.

Overthinking stupid little things.

Like—

I'd asked her what she did for pet care when she goes on vacation. She takes the dogs with her. Unhelpful. She gave lots of suggestions. None of them were really a good fit. To be frank, I already had a Plan B. I was just hoping she had a better option.

She didn't.

She said the woman one house over does house-sitting.

Ugh.

No.

Don't mix business with the neighborhood.

After all, if it goes badly, we have to live one house over.

But even if it doesn't go badly, we'd be inviting someone from the neighborhood into our home. To see our daily schedule. Entrusting them with our lives. The dirt. The smells. The leftovers in the back of the fridge.

What's to stop them from walking around the block, pointing at the house I've grown to hate, and saying, "You should hear these crazy people's pet-care instructions," while pulling out the five-page document I spent hours typing, reading, updating, rereading, editing, and printing?

I guess there's some world, some alternate universe, some Sliding Doors moment where I wouldn't care.

I'm moving anyway.

Fuck all these bitches.

I'm getting out of here.

But the wave.

I'm riding it.

Nothing in life is guaranteed. A move can seem imminent and still take another couple of years.

Forever might just be a couple of months.

We don't know a thing.

Not really.

Nothing's a done deal till it's done.

Thanks for the book.

I've been listening to positive affirmations. 

One of them says, "Everyone feels insecure sometimes. It's normal."

But I need a house-sitter so we can go look at houses in another state. And this girl, over Twix Chunk ice cream in a cone, looked me in the eye and said, "Selfishly, I have to ask... do you have to move?"

I thought for a moment...

Maybe not.

As I ate my raspberry and green apple sorbet.

And I thought maybe these people aren't that bad.

And maybe we've just been too guarded.

I should connect with her on Instagram.

And maybe she's just busy.

Maybe she isn't on the 'gram like I am.

I don't fucking know.

I don't know anything.

And that's not a poor me, poor me, I don't know shit kind of thing.

It's just the God's honest truth.

I have no clue which way my life is going, and I'm trying to go with the flow.

She probably felt insecure too. About this loud girl who talked so much about herself and poo-pooed all her ideas.

(But for real—boarding two dogs and four cats before just finding another sitter on Rover? Come on.)

And my horoscope says:

"The lessons embedded in your current circumstances might be most accessible when you approach them with genuine curiosity rather than a desire to move past them quickly."

Okay.

I've been curious. I've been patient. I've been like, Ooooh, what's the lesson? What's the little prize at the bottom of this Raisin Bran box?

I've been like that for months, it seems.

Yet all I keep finding is that I am all the things I tell other people not to be.

Oh, don't overthink it.

Don't make it a big deal.

My own voice, sour fucking cold sorbet in my mouth on a hot day.

And those walls I built up—the ones that felt like good boundaries, the ones that kept me from being vulnerable and getting hurt—were just ways to pretend, for years, that I'm not insecure as fuck.

How long do I wait to start this fucking book?

sum of deez dings

Some of these things—these dreams—I dreamt when I was practically a child. High school, college, you know?

These things I’ve been carrying around on my back, from town to town, job to job, each new face I meet. I haven’t really examined them since I first dreamt them.

I haven’t really dug under the surface and asked: Why? Why this? Why this for me?

It’s not a bad goal. Not a bad aspiration. But does it feel good on me still, decades later?

God, I’m almost forty and still doodling ideas I made when I pierced my own nose over the course of three hours—not even straight—in the middle of the night with a sewing needle and a post earring from Claire’s.

And maybe that is what I’ve been mistaking for destiny all these years: a girl alone at night, trying to make herself into someone.

So now I feel it’s time to take inventory, really tally it up, and ask: What do I want?

Not the “I” I swore I was forever and a day ago, but the “I” I am now. The one who lived all that life.

What does that woman—the almost-forty woman, in her second marriage, name on the mortgage, fucking paid-off car—want?

What does she want?

It’s peace. It’s freedom. It’s peace.

It’s not being tied forever to who I was for a minute.

Safe and Secure.

Last night, under a full moon in Capricorn, I kept waking up with fear.

Nothing was happening.

That was the stupid part.

I was in bed. I was under a roof. My husband was asleep beside me. The dogs were somewhere in the house, breathing their hot little dog breath into the dark. The moon was doing whatever moons do over women who are trying, God help us, to sleep.

And still, my brain was dragging furniture to the doors.

The kind of fear where I start thinking through all possible outcomes of my life. I start making contingency plans: if X happens, I will do Y. Worst case, best case. Mentally drafting Facebook Marketplace posts in the event I have to sell everything I own just to eat.

Not because that’s realistic. Because it is a fear I have, and my brain wants to solve it before it happens, like fear is a bill I could pay early.

Not that it probably even would happen.

But try telling that to the moon.

Recently, I listened to a podcast, and the researcher being interviewed said, “Safety and security are the two things women want most.”

It was an episode on the psychology of men’s and women’s drives and desires and needs. Fine. Okay. I’m listening.

But then the researcher continued, “Safety and security are relative, subjective, so the best advice for any woman is to choose to feel safe and secure.”

Excuse me, ma’am.

Mrs. Doctor Lady on a podcast.

What?

What do you mean just choose to feel safe and secure?

Like it’s a throw pillow? Like it’s an essential oil? Like I can just stand in my kitchen, snap my fingers twice, and announce to the cabinets, “Well, boys, we’ve done it. The nervous system is chill now.”

And I’m too lazy to quote quote quote quote some smart bitch, but it actually did make sense, which honestly pissed me off more.

Obviously, do your best to be safe, to be secure. Basic safety stuff like being alert in parking lots and sharing your location and not dating abusers. Basic security stuff like saving money and budgeting and whatnot.

But safety and security are relative.

Recently, my husband and I passed on a house because the neighbor had some aggressive dogs. We said no, no, no, this house is UNSAFE.

And I still think that was a fair thing to consider. I do. I am not trying to girlboss my way into a dog attack.

But I also think there are plenty of people who would be absolutely elated, relieved even, that just two dogs behind a fence were the biggest threat. At some point, someone should be shaking me and saying, “There are people dying, Caroline. There are bombs exploding in some neighborhoods.”

You’re right.

And still, my nervous system lives in its own country with its own war and it's own economy.

And security? My God. It’s not even that long ago that my current savings, bank account, assets, what have you, would have been unheard of in my own life. I remember a time when I received a $2,000 tax refund and felt fucking RICH.

And not in some flippant, hyperbolic way. I mean I really felt rich. So rich I went to the bars and bought drinks for everyone. Me. A benevolent queen in Forever 21 earrings, blessing the village with well vodka.

Me today, of course, thinks $2K would nice but doesn’t go THAT far—plus inflation will only get worse—all the more reason it should be saved. Saved, saved, saved, because I need to feel secure as a lil baby wrapped and swaddled in my dollar-bill blanky.

Which is funny until it isn’t.

Because that girl at the bar with her tax refund thought she had made it. And the woman in bed with more money than that still wakes up rehearsing disaster.

Yeah, I guess safety and security are subjective, and the best thing to do is just CHOOSE to be safe and secure. Like snap, snap, I’m now safe and secure, bitches. I don’t need to wake up worried or planning or thinking about what-ifs.

And what a cruel joke, that what women value most—safety, security—we honestly never REALLY get, because it’s subjective. Because there is no number in a bank account that can promise nothing bad will happen. No neighborhood so quiet. No husband sleeping so close. No moon so full it can fill the hole.

But don’t worry your pretty little head too much, because the guys have it rough too. They most crave productivity. Not just present productivity, but past and future productivity too. So theirs isn’t just subjective; it’s got a whole stupid time-contingency thing too.

God bless us, every one. The men are haunted by to-do lists. The women are haunted by the locked door.

So fine.

I choose it.

I choose safety. I choose security. I choose the roof over my head, the money in the bank, the dogs behind their fence, the husband asleep beside me, the moon hanging over the house like a silver coin nobody can spend.

I choose it.

And still, somewhere around 3 a.m., my brain opens Facebook Marketplace and starts pricing the furniture. 

I think I could get $409 for this bed if I got good photos.

Unfinished Business

Last night, my husband, lying in bed, turned to me and said,

 "God is keeping us here in Alabama a little longer for a reason.

 I just don't know what it is yet."

See, this is one of the things that first attracted me to him:

his spirituality,

his faith in the universe,

his belief in magic.

Not metaphorical magic.

Actual magic.

In our first month of dating,

we each slept with a crystal we'd chosen,

then gifted it to the other.

It was his idea.

The clear quartz point he gave me

still sits on my altar.

The raw amethyst chunk I gave him

still rests on his smoke stand.

So when my husband, lying in bed, turned to me and said,

 "God is keeping us here in Alabama a little longer for a reason.

I just don't know what it is yet."

I took it seriously.

I pictured psychic chains

tethering a ghost to a place

until it resolved

the unresolved business of its life.

And today I looked around

this place with renewed eyes,

searching for the soul contract

we made with this land—

the land we are so desperate to leave.

Do we need

to unite our home,

to end the feline civil war

that demands we keep one cat away from another?

Should we harvest and can

the tomatoes this summer,

so they'll sustain us

through the Hoosier winter?

Perhaps it's the neighbor

who waves goodbye each morning.

I gave him zucchini from the garden

and cookies I'd baked.

We still harbor resentment.

Or perhaps it's the leaky bathroom faucet

we still haven't fixed,

though the replacement parts sit,

silent and accusing,

on the floor.

Or maybe it's nothing.

Maybe we're falling into

the oldest human trap:

constructing

the illusion of control,

like OCD—

believing that locking

and unlocking the door

three times

can save you.

The Second House in Four Years

Tomorrow, I am going to a neighbor’s house to hang out.

Aside from my own, I’ve only ever been inside one other house in this neighborhood, and every minute of those ten minutes, I was praying to leave.

Easter last year, the wife next door asked if we wanted some of the Easter dinner leftovers. I had assumed Paul would decline, but instead, I found myself tasked with getting Tupperware from the kitchen. I brought three containers. Few enough not to seem greedy, and few enough not to commit to too much time in the house, but enough to seem earnest.

Luckily, the kitchen was near the door, so at the time, I considered myself lucky. She showed me items and asked if I wanted some. I said sure to everything, but knew deep down I didn’t want any of it. 

But what do you do in this situation? Say, no, I don’t want your baked beans that are a special recipe and have been a family favorite for decades, because if I know one thing about myself, it’s that I secretly prefer baked beans straight out of the can, bland, room temperature, and scooped out with chips. Potato or tortilla, depending on my mood. Sometimes I can get a little wild.

I saw sweet release in sight as she snapped a lid on the third container with macaroni and cheese inside. Which, perhaps this is bragging and not the right time to mention, but I make very, very, very good macaroni and cheese. I hand-shred extra sharp cheddar from a block. I freshly grate Parmesan off a fragrant, hard hunk. I slowly stir the bits of cheese into evaporated milk and macaroni over low heat and watch them melt into a beautiful, decadent blend. I didn’t want her mac and cheese. I wanted the third dish filled so I could leave.

But alas, friends, perhaps you see by the mass of words that follow this sentence that there is much more to this story. I was not free. Freedom remained elusive and cold, for she then pulled out paper plates and aluminum foil and insisted I take half of a chocolate cake, which she was already cutting and placing on a flimsy paper plate.

Then, after she had forced upon me a little bit of everything, she did the most dreaded thing one could do.

“Would you like a tour?”

“Oh no, no, Paul’s waiting for me and I probably need to get this in the fridge,” I said, gesturing to a mass of food I didn’t want.

“But this is the first time you’ve been to my house.”

Now, I will be honest, I have no idea what exactly that means. I guess somewhere deep in some Southern etiquette book, you are supposed to guide your first-time guest from room to room and show them everything, from the shitter to the bed you fuck in. Maybe I’d be more inclined if I wanted to be her friend, but I didn’t. Just to be clear, it wasn’t because she was elderly. I’ve had and will have senior citizen friends. It’s because she’s a proven, grade-A, top-tier bitch and gossip.

And so I finally was able to leave and carry the unwanted loot home, where I, not being one to completely close myself off, tried a bit of each and then tenderly tipped each container into the trash, disappointed that I suddenly had enough dirty dishes to run the dishwasher after only ten minutes.

But that was a year ago, and now, tomorrow, I am going to a different neighbor’s house. I actually think I could like her. She seems exactly as neurotic as me.

Her husband will be at “group,” which from context clues I have gathered is some version of AA or NA for people who want to not drink or use drugs but refuse AA or NA to do it. Whether “group” is some intellectualized or religiousized or medicalized version remains unknown to me. I’ve seen both. Get sober through science! Get sober through Jesus! Get sober through a pill! I don’t really have strong opinions. I just got sober the same way people have done it since the ’40's and wasn’t too worried about some fandangled new way. AA was just fine for me.

But enough of that! Get this, friends.

When she invited me, she said we could meet at her house or “go out for a charcuterie.” Can you imagine? Anyone who knows me — and of course this woman doesn’t know me — should know that I, of all people, will not be buying cold cuts, crackers, and cheese dried up on a wood board at a 10x markup, right now in Trump’s economy!

Yes, I was forged and quenched like a sword in practicality. Watch now as I, at the age of thirty-eight, mysteriously turn into my mother when I was a child. I am peering down at my own round, youthful, hopeful face, two Lunchables — the ’90s charcuterie predecessor — clutched in my two tiny hands. I can hear my mother’s voice and my voice mashed in garbled synchrony:

“For that price, I could buy a whole box of crackers, a whole pack of bologna, a whole thing of cheese singles.”

She wasn’t wrong.

Just as I wasn’t wrong to text back, “Your house is fine,” when in reality, I am choosing the lesser of two evils. Apparently there is something worse than a neighbor's house and it's spending $25 on $5 of meat cheese, and crackers.

I offer to bake cookies and bring them.

Because, again I am bragging, I am very good at making cookies. People rave about how soft and perfect they are. The trick, you see, is to pull them out of the oven before they seem done.  The key step, then, is to carefully remove them from the pan onto a cooling rack, let the room air circulate around the cookie so it cools slightly and the heat never tips too far.

That’s the main issue, people with hard cookies or overdone cookies — they wait for it to look like the perfect cookie in the oven, or leave them on the pan, forgetting the pan and the heat inside the dough will continue to bake.

I'm sorry. 

So what the fuck is the point of all this you may ask.

Jesus, I don’t know. It’s all kind of meaningless.

The distance between how I understand the world and how others do, how I find myself going to someone else’s house for the second time in two years four years of living in this neighborhood. It’s strange to be me, and probably ten times stranger for these people to meet me.

The Imminent Inevitable

    For months I’ve known it would come to this, yet I still don’t know what to write. We have a plan to move back home, to Indiana, but I hardly talk about it anymore. How many times have I told friends something only for it to go nowhere? I can already see the places this plan could fall apart. Until ink is dry on a house deed, I’m too scared to say much of anything.

    Even now, when I feel in my bones that the inevitable is imminent—that we will move, and that I want to move—there’s one thing that could hold me back: these cats. This thing I’ve tried to put into words so many times and just… can’t. Every time I try, the same question rises: Do you think I’ve done enough?

    Last year in August, I was still in a depression that had stretched two years long and had started shortly before we moved to this place. By then it wasn’t the immediate-crying, fear-of-tomorrow kind anymore. It was the autopilot kind—the tail end, when the clouds part but everything is still gray. You could tip either way.

    That’s when I met a feral cat and her three kittens. The mother was skittish, but the kittens took to me, and suddenly I had a purpose again. I relearned that trust is built slowly: showing up every day, feeding them, moving the same way each time. My husband and I named them Shine, Sassafras, and Tater Tot. By November, I’d caught them and gotten them fixed. Shine and Tater Tot, taken to people faster, were adopted through a rescue. Sassafras stayed. Our indoor cats haven’t accepted her yet, but she’s part of the family. She’s lying to my left as I type this.

    Of course, the feral mama—Suzy—showed up with five new kittens right before I caught the first three. I regretted not catching her earlier. Those five eventually became two: Lil Black and Moustache. Not names but descriptions of appearance. I caught Lil Black and got him fixed in March of this year. By then Suzy had three new kittens, and only one survived: Turtle. He joined the other two, and the trio stuck together. I caught Moustache in August, and Suzy in November. Now only Turtle remains. I’ll catch and fix him before we move. He runs to me. He’ll be easy.

Still, the five kittens who disappeared weigh heavily on me. So does the idea that many more might never have existed if I’d known earlier how to catch Suzy first. I could have spared her—and them—so much suffering. Again the question: Did I do enough?

    Then there’s Charles. Back in February, our security cameras caught what looked like an all-white cat at the door. We panicked, thinking one of our indoor ones had slipped out. Eventually we realized it was a thin white-and-orange cat with a clipped ear—already fixed. My husband named him Charles. As Charles gained weight and confidence, it became clear she was female. We still call her “him.” She visits daily but never fully joined the trio. The trio mostly hangs out two houses down. A neighbor also feeds them; sometimes I see him carry out a plate of food. He even built a shelter. Once I followed Suzy and saw her eat behind another house. I’m not the only tender heart here.

    All this is to say: when we move, I have to leave them behind. Five cats outside. Five cats I schedule my life around. Five cats I love and worry about. Five cats my husband will make a turkey for on Thanksgiving. When one is late, my husband and I update each other and breathe a sigh of relief at their arrival. This thing that has been part of our life for a year and a half—we will simply abandon.

    I’ve mulled it over, turned it in my mind. Studied it in every direction. It would be impossible and cruel to take them. I couldn’t catch all five in one day. They’re essentially wild. Even catching and transporting our indoor pets for a cross-state move will be a headache. And if I did catch them, they would struggle with the climate change. Alabama’s mild winters are nothing like Indiana’s. And who knows if feral cats already live where we’re going? A new colony wouldn’t be welcome. At least here, they know the land they’ve always lived on.

    It would be cruel...like when I moved here to Alabama. A relocation I wasn’t meant for. Seasons my body never adapted to. Them too, I think. They belong to this street the way I belong to my home state. Creatures of specific soil. They can't come to Indiana with me.

    I remind myself: people feed them. Maybe not as consistently, and maybe no one else is buying rotisserie chickens every week. Maybe breakfast won’t be at 5 a.m. sharp. But they are wild animals. They probably have more instinct and survival ability than I allow myself to believe. Moustache roams far. He probably hunts. Even my childhood outdoor cats caught mice and birds. And this is a neighborhood—a network of scraps, shelters, sympathetic neighbors. If others feed them—and I know some do—maybe it isn’t as dire as I fear. There are the two girls who pedal bikes to deliver them tuna once and a while after school.

    At least they’ll all be fixed. The females won’t have to pour their bodies into litter after litter. The males won’t be driven by endless fighting and mating. That alone improves their chances. They’re healthy. And calories matter. The weight I put on them might carry them far. But is it enough enough?

    Maybe, if we find a rural house with a barn, I could take one. If I did, it would be Charles. My husband would guess Turtle—and yes, I can pet and pick up Turtle. But Turtle has friends. If hunger ever came, he’d charm someone else into feeding him. Moustache and Lil Black are bonded and wilder. Suzy survived before me and will survive after. It’s only Charles I worry about—she mostly relies on my porch for food and warmth. She arrived so skinny. But she’s a survivor. And who’s to say she didn’t once have someone like me who moved away? How else did she get the clipped ear? Maybe she found me months after their departure. Maybe she’d manage to do it again.

    I can't stay in Alabama and I can’t stay in Alabama for some cats. I can’t take them with me. I can’t check on them or know they’ll be okay. And if we’re honest, nature is brutal. Even if I stayed, no amount of food or shelters or routines would save them forever. They will die. The indoor cats I’m taking will die. I will. You will. Everyone does. Some sooner than others. You never know when or how, but you can be certain it will happen. It's never enough.

    It’s like those kittens who disappeared. I don’t know for sure that they died, but I imagine they did. Maybe that unknown black cat I’ve seen three streets over is one of them. Somehow it’s surviving, without any help from me. These cats are stronger and smarter than I give them credit for. They might live to a decent feral age—three or four years. I gave them a good start. Good nutrition. They’re fixed. If any feral cats have a chance, it’s them.

    Do you think that’s enough? The question circles back as soon as I try to imagine the move, as soon as I picture the driveway, the boxes, the final sunrise on this porch. Them arriving for 4 p.m. dinner to find no one home. It seems like not enough. It's never enough.

    Last August, they gave me a reason to live. They essentially saved my life. They rebuilt my confidence and my fight. They gave me a heart. How Tin Man of me. And all I’ve wanted since is to repay them—to return the favor.

Have I done enough?

I don’t think I’ll ever feel certain.

    Maybe certainty was never the point. Maybe the “imminent inevitable” isn’t just the move—it’s the knowledge that love doesn’t guarantee safety. Death always comes. And I did more than most would. More than I thought I could when everything was still gray. Maybe the best I can offer is love and the faith that they’ll find what they need after I go.

    I’m starting to think these cats don’t need me to save them. After all, I was the one who needed saving. Maybe they’ll find someone else the way they once found me. Maybe that’s the whole point: nothing follows us when we leave. All that's left is the evidence that we cared and all we can hope is that it was enough.

Love reshapes us.
Responsibility can become identity.
Letting go is not the opposite of caring,
but the final stage of it. 

How can I complain about seasickness when I’m the one who set the boat in motion?

I Hate This Stupid Place

While driving, my husband said, “Must be dumbass day.”
He says that a lot when we drive.

As the driver of a Mercedes—phone in hand, either texting or emailing something clearly more important than our lives—drifts across two lanes, he adds, “If stupid were money, Alabama would be rich.”

When we first moved here, I used to defend them. It’s just a different culture, babe. We’re just adjusting.

By the second year, I softened it: It’s not all of them. There are a few decent people.

Now, three years in, I’ll admit it: I hate this stupid fucking place too.

It’s not stupidity in the sense of ignorance—it’s a self-centered, short-sighted oblivion. The kind that hurts others while somehow hurting itself, too. I’m no saint; I understand selfishness. But sometimes, simply considering another person’s well-being benefits you in the long run. These people, yes these people, have their priorities completely akimbo.

I can understand those who make bad choices out of pain—addicts, thieves, cheaters, abusers, the desperate. But this kind of casual cruelty, the thoughtless, everyday kind? I’ll never understand it.

Take our neighbors. Our eighty-something-year-old next-door neighbor—let’s call him John, because that’s his actual name—had his appendix removed this month. That same weekend, his wife, Joyce (also her real name), went on a girls’ trip to the beach.

This is so far removed from how I live my life. I couldn’t imagine leaving my spouse during post-op recovery. Maybe that says more about me than her.

And yet there was John: belly full of stitches, taking antibiotics, keeping company with nothing but the TV and an alarm clock.

Meanwhile, Joyce sipped margaritas with her girlfriends in the sunshine. My husband and I brought over chocolate cake, peanut butter cookies, beef stew, and biscuits. John thanked us, noted he hadn’t remembered to eat much that day, and—just to change the subject—asked if we’d noticed the pile of rocks in the yard across the street.

The next week, Joyce was gone again—off to Nashville with her adult daughter—leaving John alone once more. A year ago, when Joyce had knee replacement surgery, John didn't go anywhere. I guess that marriage only goes one way.

But before you pity John too much, let me clarify—he’s no better.

We also have a neighbor named Kenny. He lives in his childhood home and cared for his mother until she died last year. He has a dog, Newton, who sometimes escapes the yard only to sit right back down on the front porch. Kenny walks with a limp from a car accident in his teens that killed his brother. Whenever John and Joyce are out of town, Kenny limps across the street to get their mail and take out their trash. I would’ve called them friends.

A few weeks ago, Kenny had a taller fence installed, leaving a small pile of broken concrete in his yard. He assumed the city would pick it up—they take branches, leaves, appliances, toilets—so why not rocks? Apparently, they don’t.

Yesterday, John told us he’d called the city on Kenny’s “rock pile.” I hadn’t even noticed it until he pointed it out again. Kenny got fined and had to shovel the concrete into trash cans—then schedule and pay for a special pickup.

I watched my husband help him—one slow scoop at a time—while John’s curtains stayed perfectly still.

What the fuck? Was that little pile of rocks really bothering John so much? Couldn’t he have just knocked on Kenny’s door and talked to the man who takes out his trash? No—he had to tattle like a preschooler.

Imagine what he thinks of our tractor trailer, outdoor cat houses, and whimsical holiday yard décor. But alas, there’s no ordinance against that. He’ll just have to silently hate.

The fucking he gets for the fucking he gave.

When we first moved here, we were excited. The mountains! The restaurants! The shopping! They still had proper, thriving malls. But we didn’t account for the fact that all these lovely places would be filled with sniveling, selfish assholes who make you want to curl up tighter and deeper into your home alone.

Recently, I thought I hated humanity. But that’s not quite true. I just hate these people. And I hate this stupid place.

When we move, I might miss Newton. He looks awful cute sitting on the porch, proud he can jump Kenny’s new, taller fence.

The Reset.

Cleaning out the office—

a fresh start

for the new job—

and I found my mother’s lipstick.

Too dark, too used,

still in her purse

when they handed it to me

after she died.

It’s been eight years.

It sat on a desk in plain view

for coworkers to see,

then in a box,

moved across state lines,

and settled here, waiting

for this moment.

Is this the missing relic

I’ve needed?

I’ve never used it.

But tonight I might.

flonase

Spray twice, each nostril,

every day—morning and night.

I didn’t have allergies

before we moved here;

I used to sleep through the night, too.

It’s like my body

is rejecting this state

as much as this place

is rejecting me.

I tell myself

I won’t need the nose spray

once we’re back home.

melatonin

My Work Anxiety Dreams

Always take place in Subway—

the sandwich shop, the easiest job

in theory I ever had. After all,

people tell you what to put on the sandwich.

Yet in my dream, I fail in ways

that hurt only me.

I forget my employee number,

my schedule—

show up at the wrong store,

work six hours on a four-hour shift,

don’t clock in, don’t get paid for any of it.

Sometimes I don’t go in for a week—

spaced it.

So many ways to fuck up

what should be an easy job

come alive in the night,

while I dream and try not to worry:

the laptop still unsent,

the new email unissued,

the W-2 still blank.

Why my big-girl job

could have as many holes

to fall into.

claritin

Hug me, in a sunshine tee,

Dry my eye, say it must be

my allergies. Thanks

for the cop-out. ’Cause

you’re the only one

in this room

who’s seen me

really cry—all this time,

two and a half years.

Tissue, please.

Last Look at This Lake

I will see ducks and turtles again,

but never ones born in this lake—

not after today. And yet, without me,

the ducks and turtles will continue,

will flourish—born in sun and shade,

in wet and dry. I’ll never see it,

not after today, but I will know

it’s true: life continues

with and without me.

it's your street but my world

we piss in the same sewer.
pretend we’re neighbors.

i nod; you walk on, polished as a liar.
i’m fine. you’re fine.

the cdc tests our piss,
calls it a spike—
guess what? not my problem.

we never touch. we never will.
i owe you nothing.

i used to pity this distance.
now i pity anyone who likes you.

i’ll leave. you’ll stay.
they’ll fold you like yesterday’s paper.

when you die,
someone will swipe pass you in the feed,
a double-tap on your obituary,
then keep scrolling.

your house sold to some young, uppity bitch
(just like me).
you’d hate her if you were still around.

but you won’t.
by then the street will be hers.

From Scarcity to Abundance

"Man is condemned to be free; because once thrown into the world, he is responsible for everything he does.

-Jean-Paul Sartre

Choices are hardest when they’re real—when every option glitters, when pros and cons balance so perfectly that change feels less like escape than risk. To change because of a real choice feels different.

In the past, my choices weren’t really choices at all. Change came from necessity. Life often offered me a choice between more pain or less, and I chose the latter… who wouldn’t? Or at least I tried. Sometimes I got it wrong. Did I say sometimes? I meant most of the time. It was just in hindsight that I realized it.

Now—the luxury of true choice. To wonder whether I’d rather stroll along sun-warmed sand or hike through shaded woods. Both are lovely. But will I regret it? You never regret choosing less pain, but you might regret missing the ocean—the scent of salt on the breeze, the way the light dances across the waves.

Even in a house full of gold chains and wristwatches, I worry there might be no silver lining. Now I worry about making the wrong choice. Me—worried about the wrong choice—when I once swung blindly from one bad decision to the next, George of the Jungle style. (Yes, I know how ridiculous that sounds—please laugh with me.)

One afternoon, I spent an hour staring at a dumpster, trying to decide whether the cop car fifty feet away would stop me from grabbing the bread an employee had just thrown out. Now I debate whether I’d rather have fewer vacation days but feel confident in my job, or risk stepping out of my wheelhouse for more money and time off. Ha! See? I have become a girl with two dates to the dance—one the quarterback, the other the class president. Don’t you feel sorry for me now? I’ll be prom queen in no time!

Perhaps it’s just one stubborn neuron, trained by decades of scarcity, that stalls at the edge of freedom, whispering: “Please, universe, make it hard again. Force me to leap.” And so I stand, paralyzed before a buffet of perfect choices, secretly hoping someone will push me off the metaphorical diving board. Instead, I find myself condemned to this freedom, accountable for every choice I make. No one else will make the leap. It has to be me.

So I tell myself there’s a pool down there—not a dumpster. And maybe, just maybe, I’m ready to jump in.

Neither of Us Will Die of Thirst

She says,
“I’m heartbroken, but I understand. I support you.”

I tell her,
“I’m not dying—just leaving for a new job,
moving out of state.”
But we both know it is a kind of death.

For a while we’ll trade memes,
send a message here and there.
Then the conversations will thin,
shriveling into a quick heart
on a post,
a comment when we happen to have time—
between jobs and children,
husbands and doctor’s appointments.

I never meant to break her heart.
But then,
harm is rarely deliberate.

My husband never meant to kill the rabbit.
He only closed the shed door without thinking.
There was straw enough for a couple of days.
We know because of the mess we cleaned.
Thirst finished what thoughtlessness began.

I know so little about my own future,
but dying of dehydration
in a locked shed
seems unlikely.
Perhaps the years ahead
are not so terrifying after all.

Let us double-check the sheds,
leave no doors closed without care.
No more small creatures
will perish at our hands.

I remind myself:
it is only a job.
In a month,
someone she likes even better
will be sitting in my chair.
In two,
I’ll have a new work-friend,
an inside joke she won’t know.

Neither of us will die of thirst.

We’ll be okay, love.
We are not small rabbits
forgotten in the dark.
We are grown women meant to survive.