I want to say things, all the time, but the things I want to say are ideas I don't have words for. I want to say things that feel as safe as a careful wave from across a room. I want to say things that are like looking at someone and nearly smiling when my face isn't ready to go all the way with it. It will take me years to think of the words, and in the meanwhile it feels terrible.

I've felt wrong all day. Sometimes when I wake up on a day that's dark and rainy I half imagine without trying that I'm in a cabin in the woods. It makes me want to stay in bed and put off for as long as I can the moment I'm forced to admit how non-woods my life is. That's how it was this morning. It's not the woods I need, it's some unknown something that's frustrating me and making me miserable, a little missing piece that I can't identify. I mean, I think the woods would work as well, but there must be something else, something nearer and more likely. Probably what I need is someone to hold my hand and tell me it's alright and that I'm not so unforgivably... I don't have the word for it, and I'm not sure I want to find it. Anyway, what I need more than the hand and the words is the willingness to believe it. Sometimes I won't believe anything.

Crab, crab, crab. Tonight I went for a walk in a shivery drizzle and got pretend lost. Around here there are a row of streets that end short on an avenue lined with apartment buildings. If you could see clear through those buildings and the buildings behind them you'd see that the streets continue for a block or two on the other side, with some extra streets tucked in. It takes a longish loop around to get to that side, and since those streets aren't on the way to anything unless you live on one of them they're almost completely unfamiliar to me. I walked there tonight in the dark and with wet eyelashes and no one around, and it felt like one of those dreams where I know I'm close but can't find my way home. Just like in those dreams I checked the street signs at each corner, halfway expecting that they'd be impossible to read, blurry or meaningless, but as I was awake it all worked out. It's sort of fun to feel lost when you know you aren't, the way it's fun to play around getting soaked in the rain when you can go in and get dry whenever you want.

I could write more, but it already feels like too much. I'm going to go to sleep and find the right dream. Tomorrow I'm going to wake up better than I did today.