Waning gibbous the Sweet and Sour moon

do you know how much a tray of flaming desire weighs?

Sometimes I wake up

like a BIG wake up in my brain that makes me shake with want with need falling is constant failing Alice down the rabbit hole what is happening? I am happy in my reclusive state but sometimes I see women walking up and down my street two by two like they're happily walking in the direction of Noah's magical zoo boat 

I miss the company of women I miss women friends like a stab in my heart

I too walk back and forth down my street but early early in the morning with an animal insistence that turns my velvet body to leathery grit arms and legs clammy skin a breath off corporeal temperature shivering dog heart as I trudge and pant 

how to introduce myself to these women with their perfectly coifed hair and little walking measurement dealys connected to their arms and comfortable walking shoes 

how do I introduce myself to them? would they be horrified if I did? I have good hair but it's not currently perfect and my shoes are Converse and I wear a weird grandma cardigan and I have the crazy eyes

those women look so                     normal

should I hide in the trees then jump out and scream Hi!!! in my uncomfortable-around-pretty-much-everyone voice? should I stand by the mailbox like I'm looking for something intellectual like the New Yorker then start walking behind them a witch wriggling toward a fairy tale center? they might invite me in or they might call the police on me maybe my democrat-ness shows?

but that's not what I want to tell you dear Darklings who have read this far

I want to tell you about the tree murderer that lives straight down the hill from me whose house is behind my house if you're a deer or a bear or a crow or an owl or a goat

during the first wave of Covid that March when we were all terrified and doing stuff like washing our clothes every time we got home after being in public I was still in a narcoleptic numbness stupor my tender edges gurgling away as I sat drooling in front of the television depression and fear making a serious dent in my play time 

I listened to baseball games on the radio from the early 1960s heavy brown leather and boxy I started building terrariums to slow my own stupid down because I had no flour with which to bake I kept propagating plants wanting something to grow to be violently alive in the news of so much death

and then I saw a man trudging through the underbrush in my backyard which was very weird he knocked at my front door KNOCK! KNOCK! KNOCK! I opened the door in my protective mask and this very much not masked man said I CUT DOWN A COUPLE OF YOUR TREES I HOPE YOU DON'T MIND

well darling readers you know I minded I minded very very much and I told that man I minded yes I minded a GREAT DEAL and I asked him how many of my trees exactly had he cut down and he said THREE which as we all know is a Jesus number a sacred number of trees so I told him it was NOT OKAY and not to cut down any of my trees down ever ever ever again because they were MY trees on MY property 

I tell you it felt like an attack that hit my head then my stomach this is not my quest! this is not how people live! he felt like an infection like a broken rib like bees in my hair like a black eye like something rotten in the middle

I took to driving down his street glaring at his house at my poor trees their poor bright orange stumps bleeding sap where they were cut and bleeding I drove by a LOT and by Jesus if he didn't cut down three more trees after that so he could build himself a driveway up into the woods on my property on my hill

goddamn it makes it hard for me to breathe to finally write it out

the next time Page was around we both walked down there and told the tree murderer to stop raping my property and that if need be I'd have my lawyer come by and speak to him (the idea of me having a lawyer is hysterical hahah but he didn't know me from squat) and he said he was going to plant more trees like that would fix the fact that I could now see his stupid compound from my deck and also all those dead trees and I still can but he didn’t cut any more of my trees down my darling darling sugar maples

but I still drive by his house occasionally to check

every time he drives by our house I say there goes the tree murderer and I give him my bullet eyeballs

                                    that should be the end of this long story but it isn't

today I asked my son to pick up my library books for me and guess who the new librarian is? it's the tree murderer's WIFE

I am conflicted friends

my heart tells me to march my fanny right down to the library and introduce myself to her because libraries have always been safe spaces for me and I've always loved librarians and maybe some time she might want to go for a walk with me maybe since she knows I'm a reader we at least have books in common                                           

and trees

and now that my soup is bubbling away and my bread is in the oven I must give you a And they all got hit by a truck kind of ending sorry I ran out of steam by the telling

And they all got hit by a truck.

The End.