a particle through

I'm cutting the shapes of all my concerns into folded sheets of white paper of a standard dimension. I have dilations of apprehension and contractions of doubt, tonight. The moon is cutting through with a cocky grace you can't really be sure of.

For now, the sun's absent from the scene, totally blotted by an opposing meridian.

Here's the crux of my problem: I'm terrified that the bulb up there has popped and is forever gone; that it won't ever buoy up again.

It's love, I guess. One that bubbles up your skin, makes you recoil from even gentle touch, and then makes it come off dead in layers. It's a love that impregnates itself in your pores, latches to your tissue and metastasizes.

It's something to love in beaches and parks, bringing stained glass to life, cleaving through dastardly gray clouds, breaking up the dull eave of woe that overhangs winter. It's something to pray for, or beg for if your prayers aren't answered quick enough.

I keep cutting and the scissors start to dull from my constant snips. The result of my work is piling up around me. I'm like the jut of a mountain whose foot has been erased.

Somehow, cutting helps balance the scales of my worry.

There's a pattern that's starting to emerge.

The house is waking up. Slippers scrape softly from all of the rooms and converge in the kitchen. There's drowsy, bad-breathed laughter and the acidic threat of caffeine. There's the dry tumbling sound cereal makes as it gets dumped into a ceramic bowl.

And footsteps once again. Predatory footsteps this time. Many feet gently swarm outside my door. A hand encroaches upon the long brass doorknob.

The door opens without any kind of plea.

Mom shakes me. Dad shakes me. Sister and brother shake me. They take what I've done in handfuls and let it fall over me, laughing.

And the edges of the windows warm with the first indication that there will be another day.