The night is hungry. I walked home from a late night foray into crisp air, hot cup in hand, wet breath spooling in my scarf, and avoided the bodies on the street. Arm-waving boys shouting their bravados in a tight group, cold and skinny in their black t-shirts. Men with beards and books they carry with suspiciously religious weight, shaking hands, exchanging hugs outside closed storefronts. The city sleepily preparing itself for binging weekend nights.

I hurried home, arrived breathless. I've been more and more jumpy since, and retreated into almost total darkness. Because I don't want there to be a light in my window. Because I don't want anyone to see my shadow moving. Maybe even the light of my netbook screen is too much, facing the wall above my bed, innermost to the house at large. I'm fighting the urge to hold my breath every time someone's conversation passes on the sidwewalk.

The cats are on alert, too, perked ears and watchful eyes more than usual, as though they are waiting. I'm waiting, too.

So many inarticulate things about the space and nature that is home. I'd love to tell you about it, but I don't really know. Yesterday was very difficult, and very bruised, and very tired, and in that run-ragged way fatigue has of making you feel every imperfection, every pea beneath the mattress, I was much more aware than I sometimes wish I was about just how wrong the shape of things here is.

Today, however, I have energy for mischief, energy for pushing back and laughing in its face. And I plan to.

Let's get this party started.

This beautiful late-winter sun, an austere light for an austere country whose leafless acres billow out from the point where I am standing.

This town a knot of spidersilk that I am caught in only barely.

These days disappearing down the well of my restlessness.

This need to Make and Move, to dive and wind myself in layers and layers of night and ground and unseen and invented worlds and run, run, run, run.

It's waking up out there, it's very close to morning. It's beating so close to the surface. Do you feel it? When the first buds break I am going to hit the air screaming like magnesium fire.