turnstyles.

i came home for the quiet.

i woke up just before dawn. tangled in an avalanche of pillows and blankets, i cradled a sock monkey in my elbow. at some point prior my mom tucked the covers above my shoulders and closed the door to my bedroom.

outside there's a forest of trees, colored in cold hues of purple and blue like fingers in the cold. i spent the morning in silence, minus the low hum of the heater in the living room, wrapped in a kimono on the chez lounge, reading novels and dispelling the knot at the bottom of my esophagus.

a lonely rage. the hunger is the meanest cage.

on one hand, i have no idea how i got here, except that at i showed up at 1:30 in the morning with only my cell phone and wallet and without keys after declining a ride back to baltimore because i couldn't bring myself to go back, not last night.

on the other hand, i know exactly how i got here. i ran too far from home, too far out on the ledge of relying on other people for my well-being. what happened to my self-sufficiency, my autonomy? i pulled a trigger and my ears ring and i feel like there should be blood on my hands, maybe my own more than anyone else's. and everyone else will shout and scream at how wrong i am to come to these conclusions, because i usually am wrong, but i still feel responsible, too ready to take the blame once again.

i'd like to think that the telenovela is dead; that the demons are subdued, purged for this final month of two thousand and eight. i will sink back into bookshelves (i'm in my fourth novel of the week), but i have enough people pulling me out to keep me from disappearing completely.

good good friends and good good things.
maybe simplicity will come sooner than i thought.