I am a rag doll.

My face is painted pretty, and I am propped in the corner with my head flopped askew. Why should I be animated when there is nothing I can do? I sit and wait for the next time you come and lift me up, and swing me around, and toss me down.

You curl around me every night and tuck your arm into my waist, I fit myself beside you and you almost don't notice I am there. But if I move, you whimper, and you do not understand that I must pee, or roll over. Sometimes I feel I am lumps on the mattress grown into with long sleep habits.

I remember making a rag doll for a kid in my neighborhood when I was younger. The limbs did not match and the smile was sewn on crooked, and the clothes barely went on and off, and the hair flopped all over. I worried if the kid would notice or care. I got a quick thank you, but nothing more. And I did not snoop in the bin to look for the doll. Some days, I wish I did know what happened to it.

Some days, I know that doll is me.

We don't have any pink in the living room. Funny what you notice when you don't sit in your usual spots.  ¶ 1:09 PM

  I've almost gotten accustomed to hearing Tony say my name when he sings. It's a great comfort to me to know that he is out there and caring about me. I like to picture him thinking of me as he tries to write a song that millions will hear, but he is only thinking of his audience of one when he writes. He is thinking about me.

I take his love and I wrap it around myself like a warm fuzzy brown blanket, and I know I'll be fine as long as he loves me. I can endure. I will survive. I am loved.

"Oh, Jeannie," he croons, and I am warm again.  ¶ 7:24 AM

  Easter is a frightening holiday.

Don't get me wrong- I like chocolate. But chocolate is not easter. Chocolate is the old aphrodesiac of Mexican gods. I make that way sometimes- straight from the bean, lightly roasted, and ground with pepper and other spices, hot and not sweet at all, and intoxicating. Angie liked it that way best too.

And eggs! I cannot bake much without eggs. But if you look at an egg, it takes a lot of bravery to just eat the egg. That's chicken abortions, that is. And when I think about eggs that way, I do not want to eat them. I do not like to dye them. Too much mess in my kitchen! But I do like the colors. I would go help with egg hunting in the park, but Frank will not let me go. He says something about an injunction. I do not understand. I only helped find the eggs and then hide them again. I am not responsible for any failure of theirs to locate them. And in Egypt, eggs represented the soul, as they were whole, and unformed. This does not make me which to eat them more. I do not live in the dark, eating souls and swallowing them whole.

Jesus, it is said, was risen again, and walked from his tomb. Now, the only other thing I've heard has done that is vampires. And the Communion of this is body eat, this is my blood drink.... That just creeps me right out. When a thing is dead, I'd really prefer it to stay dead, thank you.

And bunnies and newborn fluffy things come on easter. Well, it is Spring. Things get born in the spring. Things die in the fall, and I suppose we celebrate that too. But it's not an easy cross to bear, let me tell you.

But I can't stay home with the Christmas lights winking the attic. No. I am taken away and forced to watch the cannibals celebrate the vampire. And I am not content.  ¶ 5:22 PM

  Hands are amazing things. Nothing tells more about a person than their hands. There is not much anyone can do without our hands, and they are what separate us from the regular animals. You can always tell someone's age by their hands, how thin the skin, how plump, how scarred or calloused, how trusting, how gnarled. They have facelifts and plastic surgery and make up to hide and change the face. But no one thinks to examine your hands.

There is power in your hands. You may use them to create, to caress, or to destroy. They communicate who we are- just watch any dancer. Listen to a talker with bad hands, and you will stare at his hands rather than hear what he says.

I fill my life with my hands with my baking and my cleaning. I have a few odd scabs and scars on the back of my hand, and one place on the webbing where I have altered my prints when I cut myself by mistake. And you can see where age is changing the shape of the joints slowly. My grandmother's hands are twisted, I can see where mine are no longer straight. I do not know where the bruise came from. It will heal in a few more weeks.

There are days when I miss gloves for everyday use. Touching is almost impersonal now. Hands were more alluring when they were rarely seen.  ¶ 9:49 AM

  Frank has been messing with my mind lately.

I found a can of beans the wrong way round this morning. I knew he went in the pantry last night. He likes to count the cordials to make sure I don't try to make more than the allotted amount. I am not permitted to have more than 5 jars. But he moved the can so the label was not aligned properly. I don't care if it is in the third row of the second shelf. It will align.

And yesterday, he moved his socks and underwear. He traded their drawers. He said it would be more efficient to be that way when he gets up in the morning to put his clothes on. I don't think it will be all that effecient when I put socks in his underwear drawer and vice versa. It'll be muddled. Then he won't know where either is. See how efficient that is, mister.

I don't know why he decided to do this. It's not like I have done anything to anger or irritate him. I have not gone anywhere so I haven't been brought home. No one has come to our door, so I haven't frightened anyone off. No one has called, not even a telemarketer. I even checked to make sure all of the phones were plugged and functioning properly without using 911. I called Time and Temperature instead,a nd that's a recording, so it doesn't bother anyone. I haven't even thrown anything at the old bint next door or posted any signs in the window. I still think a countdown to the average life expectancy is funny, but Frank said she was going to sue.

I'm going to fret about this more. Maybe it's time to reorganize the attic. I could check the Christmas lights again. I have never started a fire with them, no matter how much Frank thinks I might. This time, I think I'll hang them in the attic first. We've got more nails around here somewhere. No hammering while Frank is home though. Poor dear will worry too much, and then I'll really be in the basket.

But if he touches my cans again, I'll burn his eggs, I swear.  ¶ 2:41 PM

  Tony is singing on my radio.

Come to me
Or I'll come to you
Look for me
Or I will find you
Love calls
Night falls
And I won't stay alone
I will have you.

Look inside
I am here
Dream no longer
I am here
All along, I am here.

Close your eyes
You can see me
Lick your lips
You will taste me
Listen closely
I'll whisper
Open your eyes
I will linger

I will always be here
For you
And you alone.  ¶ 9:31 PM

  When was the last time that you sat at a window and just dreamed? Thought impossible things, like elephants in frilly pink tutus and unicorns offering to rest their heads in your lap? Thought of vampires sipping cherry coke without thinking of a drug reference? Considered what might have been if you lived somewhere else, had met someone else, and could have been someone else?

What would you change? Who would you love? What would have been your hobbies?

Do you yearn for that road, for that might have been?

Now. You have two choices in this precious moment of time. Find the way to get there from here, strive with everything that is in you, and you can perhaps achieve it, or do something grand in the effort.

Or you may do like myself, and sit here, and stare out the window, and wish for might have been.  ¶ 2:11 PM

  They will not let you have open flames at the cemetery.

While this does not apply to those special candles they sell in the grocery store for the leaving at your private altars or shrines, they don't like camp stoves. I think that's the first time I've ever been thrown out of a cemetary.

Hell, I didn't know you could be evicted and banned from a cemetary.

Frank, of course, was very upset.

I don't think I need to mention that. Not really. Most things I do seem to set him more on edge than a cat with a buttered piece of toast strapped to its back. And I can't explain that metaphor to him either.

I wanted to make brownies again with Angie. I miss that. I did not know any other way to try. And because they won't let me back in, I don't think coming back with a solar oven is going to work either. And they threatened to have me in for loitering outside the gates.

On a positive note, at least the counter is clean. Frank will not ask every day when I will be using that pile of things, nor will he ask what I plan to bake today. I don't think he'll mention any baking at all for some time to come.  ¶ 1:11 PM

  Today is the kind of day where I just want to curl up on my heating pad on the small of my back, a warm cup of hot chocolate with some obscenely-shaped marshmallow creature ignorantly blissfully floating away on top, with a good book about death and maybe some Tony or Wagner playing softly in the background in as subdued a lighting as possible and no one to say anything to me at all.

Frank does not understand these days. I genuinely do not expect him to. He has a penis. Why should he understand this?

Things are dripping and flowing, as they should. but I think of tears and what may have been, and I look at clots and wonder what if. And I ache all over, and it's not just my head that hurts. How foolish I was when I was younger and I used to pray it would start. Now I am older, and sometimes I am on the edge of wanting it to stop forever, or just for a little while...

Geese fly south again.
Rain rivers down the glass pane.
Pain just passing through.  ¶ 2:24 PM