Day 15

I was down in the garage again, with the buzz of flies around me. I’m making portraits in acrylic paint using cardboard.

I paint the outline of a face of a caribbean woman with a large hat, that woman and her hat ends up becoming an outline of me with this

pink glow coming out. The days cave in on themselves, each hour passes caves in on the hope that a resolution will be met.

I am a teacher who is on strike out of solidarity with another union that is on strike, against our school district. The picketers had the sprinklers turned on them when they were picketing in front of the district office on Monday afternoon.

The summer is over. The world is back to work and I am here in this house with the heavy flu breath of most of the family. Two members and counting require refills of tea, ramen, water and leaves of eucalyptus.

My guitar stopped working yesterday. I was in the middle of writing a song about someone close to me who hurt me the day after I told them how happy I was that I was getting closer to me. I made that exact point clear. There are times in my life when I’ve not been present, and I was trying to not be so Adam when I kind of Adamned all over the place.

I left myself open to being hurt and sometimes they do. And I act all hurt because how else am I supposed to act?

Because the pencil wont sharpen and the guitar wont connect to the audio interface and my feelings of loss won't translate to a world that is falling apart and each day the separation grows and the kids are at home alone and I keep making art for my classroom walls, but each day we go on there is nothing but me painting and the kids far away.

My novel-in-progress has stalled with its inside laid bare and I am stuck in the waiting room outside, as unable to unpack that book as much as I am unable to unpack the rest of what is happening to me and the people I love.

There is a trampoline in my head and when I step inside of it it pulls me down into layers of distrust. I lean into a mattress made out of things that are out to bleed me dry. Endless web banners from the early 2000s, a restaurant description from the Fall 1991 University of South Carolina restaurant guide I have for some reason chosen to memorize.

When I look in the mirror I want to run and hide.

I’d run faster if the ground wasn’t sinking below my feet.

Still I keep:

-Slathering paint onto canvases.

-Putting words down on paper.

Guitar chords still ring out when not amplified. They're just a little harder to hear.