Winter Buds

Naturally the idea that wouldn’t leave me be this morning while I needed to get ready for work has gone off in a sulk somewhere. It will return when it needs to be written. I will drink coffee. Coffee with a rich silty aftertaste. Coffee that gives me that moment of pause, which when I’m busy maybe I neglect? The warmth of it welcome too, as I’m letting any old words wander out, as the rain pools under a cold push of wind and the sky is so dull and flat it’s like no sky at all. I’m sat by a wall’s length of glass, drafty, good view of the greenery flailing, chewing up my coffee dregs, thinking about lunch not because I’m hungry but because there’s no food.

There’s pennies in my pocket, lunch can happen, an improvement on previous days. Fair to say I have bemoaned and embraced low income life - only first world poverty after all - and am loving moving on. Car, chromebook, a lit fire, lunch, a long list of things I am happy to have. Soon we can start to look for land to buy. Doing my best not to fear losing this hope. It is not an entirely irrational fear. A point of change is vulnerable. A point of stability is vulnerable. Life is vulnerable. I dreamt I woke up on a surfboard atop of a monster wave: no idea how I was going to cope, no point in panicking, I just had to deal with it. Then I woke up, so I hope my dream-self made it. I hope I make it. The rain is getting biblical. The idea slopes back. It says there are two Christmas’s coming: two futures, two lives: and this is true for most of us. There’s what you wanted, and what it is. There’s a gap to navigate. Everything is vulnerable. Outside the river is swelling over the street. A mass of muddied water. Pretty boats dip. If you look closely at the windblown winter trees, there are buds.