beast.

the shrill whine of the phone, like a shocked animal. unexpected at this hour.

spring has just shuddered around the bend, gracing us with warm days & with balmy nights. the window is open & the bedside lamp is staining the walls with diluted yellow. i can't sleep. i've gyrated from position to position, ultimately no more comfortable in one than the other. the sheets are a mess. i've stopped caring.

on the display is an unfamiliar number with an even more unfamiliar area code. by the third or fourth ring, panic grips me. indecision stews in my stomach, but it doesn't even have time to simmer before, for whatever reason, i answer. it's S on the other end. i knew it, somehow, maybe the fog of insomnia gifted me with extrasensory perception. i heard his voice seconds before he spoke, like an echo ahead of itself. with that recognition came surging dread, and the muddle of my thoughts gave me away.

i feigned drunk, too drunk to move. certainly to hang out. he doesn't want to "rekindle a relationship," he says to me, but he "misses" me, and "was thinking about" me the other day. of course he was. they came into my workplace. and due to my conspicuous evasion of them - (which, by the way, is no longer a question) - he found it necessary to recall my number from the swirling depths of his memory & use it at four in the morning. not that i begrudge him. i never sleep early. i don't think that will ever change. i will burn myself out on late nights. he told me he would call me tomorrow, but he hasn't, and i know what he heard in my voice, and i know what i heard in his: disappointment.

i am wilding around the edges, creeping with a sort of acquired fauna that appears lichen-like but which behaves like bacteria. i am concerned for my gulping, pulpy bagpipe of a stomach. for all of the slick organs, pumping in tireless rhythms against all the other rhythms. eventually the drummer's arms become weary. i meant to say that i was fraying at the edges by the word "wilding." not fraying harmfully, but in a slow pattern, as if getting one's favourite sweater caught on the exact same nail at the exact same time every day of one's life.

it's windy and E. has put out the table & chairs in the courtyard by our porch. there will be a lilac tree in full bloom, and what appear to be tulips, proudly striving to always be the first flower of spring, yet constantly beaten by the smug daffodils, the crocuses. the tulip is a flower in denial.

the son of vladimir nabokov, dimitri, has decided (against his father's last wishes) that the last novel (unfinished) will be published.