after the cups, the marmalade, the tea

today's accomplishment: finished the A's in the Oxford English Dictionary
on repeat: my favorite chords
daily banana count: five

as a child, she would pull the pollen-laden stamens off the evergreen tree on her front lawn as the horizon pulled the copper-penny sun into its black, breaching womb. flouncing around with her school frock on, she would scatter the yellow pollen on the grass, the driveway, the sidewalk. twilight skies streaked with dissipating cirrus; singing to herself “I am sprinkling the dusk, I am sprinkling the dusk,” unaware of her poignant mistranslation. her eyes shining in the crepitating dark like nacreous oyster shells in the inky sea, the little harbinger of night danced in the dust, in the dusk.

last night we ran all the way* to montparnasse to make it to le mix before minuit so that we could evade the simple costs of simply existing in a place. all the way means a fifteen minute run through the shiny streets with glossy people behind glossier windows of le dome, le select, la coupole, la closerie des lilacs. all the way means my hair was whipped behind me & as jane was trailing, julian called out "now girls, i know we're good looking but could you please just leave us alone?" all the way there, and we didn't even make the deadline. thank goodness for gentlemen.

at the end of the night, i saw my first fist fight. it was anti-climactic. i can't get the sight of his smallness out of my head; a little doll crumpling. his beautifully symetrical face that hardly even had peach fuzz - scraped & bruised, his mouth still just as full of over-compensations as his predators' loaded fists. the sound of his body being kicked was a thud where i was expecting a shattering.

*we walked all the way home, & had four hours sleep, & now it's after two & i'm reading old journals & overwhelmed with a feeling of gratitude & satisfaction. perhaps, the secret to satisfaction is sleeping less.