today's walk is brought to you by the silver shoes

Today’s head is full of the fear and high of reading, the self-doubt and exhilaration of workshop, the love for my friends, the loud music, the lime section and club soda on my tongue from a straw, the bartender who would not stop saying honey, the boy who wanted to blow a balloon animal for me (it is no longer my birthday, I said), the dread dread dread of the letter, the deadlines, the weekend, the working, the wanting, exhausted, last minute, curly-haired, pen-skinned, dry.

And somewhere in there. Somewhere, how? Somewhere this afternoon between the chocolate protein shake replacing breakfast and lunch and dinner and the critiquing of poems with a classmate and the pulling down of the too short skirt and the pinning of the torn blouse and the rip in the boots and the long drive and the tired and the hopeful and the speaking and the nerves, came an idea.

My idea. This idea to shape the book, to sculpt the book, to finish it, to make it done, a parallel, an arc, a language, a core. Days ago, my science love had his own idea, discovering cells. He wrote to me. This is it, my breakthrough. I know you will not understand.

This is it, my breakthrough. I know you will not understand.

How was there room in my head? How is there room in the book? How, how, how to do this. The microscope, the slide. I gather needles.

I do not understand but I know. I do not know but I believe. I do not believe but for a powerful, powerful sense of YES.