it hasn't stopped raining yet.

it's n's birthday.
we painted the table he built.
he always has wine ready.
he readied me while i was standing at the precipice, wondering what to do with my life.
he spoke to me about two kinds of "passionate," and suggested he knew which kind i was.
then he casually poured some wine and mashed up some guacamole and let me be.

i awoke.
maybe it was the avocados. maybe it was the lime.

whatever it was, i dove.

and here i am, two years later. swimming with all i've got.

“Let them think what they liked, but I didn’t mean to drown myself. I meant to swim till I sank — but that’s not the same thing.”

- Joseph Conrad

“Ms. O’Brien describes her young self this way: “I was ravenous. For food. For life. For the stories that I would write, except that everything was effervescent and inchoate in my overexcitable brain.” She desired, she says, to be “drawn into the wild heart of things.””

— Edna O’Brien, Seeking the Ardent Life. O, joy! To the wild, wild heart of things!