As the Crow Flies

Straight as an arrow.

The arrow of silver, Tiffany spun, you surprised me with, waking me from slumber–

Slipping into my room as I lay sleeping.

Never have I been so delighted.

Moved.

Shook.

I thought of that arrow today, it’s flight suspended between my clavicles, pointing to the stars that spangle my chest.

(Just added another one this past Friday)

Tempted to point out the fresh ink, the pink clementine orange of it, picture it, kiss it, and shoot you a photo of it with a wry smile.

Yet.

I did not.

I blocked you out, off my heart, off my soul, oft without you I have walked so long, why would it be any different now?

The crow flew over Jefferson Square park, a short walk from my house, dogs frolic in the late afternoon sun, and the murder gathered in the eucalyptus trees to spring full into the air twirling against the February sky.

Plum blossoms, pale pink and lavish purple, like bruises against the sky, tears of petals hanging from dark tree limbs.

Like the limbs burning on my back.

More work on the tattoo.

The one you inspired.

Two crows.

One cherry tree.

One heart.

Sometimes I think the pain is like the ghost of your hands on the backs of my shoulders.

Where you would hold me, whilst atop me, pushed in, face buried in my neck, arms under my shoulders, holding me as we became one and inseparable.

Yet.

Separate.

We are.

The crow reminded me of you, I said hello, carry my wishes forward to you upon the wind, but not my calls, my love letters or cards.

I am not sending them anymore.

I deleted you.

I blocked you.

I let you go.

Off into the high sky, like pastel balloons escaping a flower shop on Valentines Day.

Sigh.

Valentines Day.

Last year.

When I reached out to you once more.

That’s why, dearest, sweetest, dreamiest you, I deleted, blocked, and erased you, so I would not set the motion in momentum forward again.

No more.

No more calls.

No more poems.

No more kisses on your sweet face.

No more staring into your eyes.

No more falling in love with you.

Not that I believe I will fall out of love with you.

The love, I sense, does not die.

But it goes, it flings itself in a blue box in a drawer, like the blue sky against the wing of the crow as it flies away from me.

You have flown away from me.

I do not expect your return.

I never knew a love like this.

My exquisite corpse.

The crow in the copse.

My heart in my mouth.

The sky.

The sky.

The sky.

Like your eyes I fell into once upon a time.

In a land far, far away, The Sunset.

The sky is the only blue I will look into anymore.

Good bye my love.

Good bye my crow laughing at a funeral.

Good bye.

Back it Up

I mean.

Seriously.

Back that shit up.

I had the most uncomfortable experience today.

Like the fucking worst, I thought I was going to vomit, I definitely burst into tears, and I cried for about a half hour after the event happened.

Slow.

Steady.

Leaky tears.

Which doesn’t bode well for having to see therapy clients when I finished my nanny job.

I cried off most of my eye makeup, and I didn’t wear the waterproof mascara today.

Not that I think my clients ever notice the state or disarray of my makeup, but I felt pretty raw today heading out to see clients.

I deleted my paper.

I deleted a work in progress paper that I have been working on since the beginning of the semester, meaning, I have been on and off writing this paper for seven or eight weeks.

50 pages.

86 references.

Fully formatted bibliography.

Poof.

Fucking gone.

I deleted it.

It was a total accident.

I can’t get into the specifics of it exactly, it would mean trying to explain APA formatting and the technology platform that I use to help me format my papers and that said technology has definitely not been doing so well holding this gigantic thing and it sort of just disappeared.

There were warnings that something like this would happen.

I had a near panic attack at work about three weeks ago when I couldn’t open the paper and I had to send the bibliography into my professor to show the progress on the work.

It’s actually a journal, not a formally written paper, it’s rather like an annotated bibliography where I have a running list of all the references, books, articles, websites, etc, that I have been collecting to help me write my dissertation.

By the end of the semester I need to have 250-300 references.

The one that got deleted today has 86.

So I still have a ways to go, but hey, 86 ain’t bad.

There’s an upcoming assignment that’s due on November 4th where I will have to provide 25-50 pages of the journal to the professor along with the full bibliography and a bunch of other stuff I won’t bore you with.

I have been diligent about doing the work, but the app has been pretty slow, but I’m used to it and I sort of just look the other way and let the damn thing do it’s thing.

Which is what I was doing, I had just formatted another reference and had another queued up to go and I wanted to look at the paper that I was citing and I toggled out of the paper and into Chrome and I was typing something and the app popped me from Chrome back into the paper and I hit backspace and deleted the whole thing, but I also typed the letter e and that replaced the paper.  So when I hit undo, all it did was undo the letter e and leave me with a blank paper.

I couldn’t undo the undo.

I literally just about vomited.

And it was such horrid timing.

The monkey woke up form his nap and both mom and dad were working from home.

I didn’t say anything.

I went to get the monkey.

The mom saw my face though and asked if something was wrong and I started crying and said “no, well, um, yeah, I think I just deleted a 50 page paper with 86 references that I have been working on for weeks and excuse me a second.”

I ran to the bathroom and sobbed for a few moments.

Then.

I washed my face,

Dried my hands.

And.

Walked back out and started to try and get a semblance of normality back together.

All I could think about though was the gigantic stack of books on my desk and how I was going to have to go back through all of them to find the quotes I had pulled, plus all the articles and how long it had taken me to just accrue what I had.

And fuck, would I even be able to get enough together to turn in the upcoming assignment and what the fuck was I going to do about the other two classes I have work in.

I mean I felt fucking floored.

I texted a friend in my cohort who immediately called, but I couldn’t pick up, I had the monkey in my lap and mom and dad doing their work and shit.

My friend texted me a bunch of helpful stuff and I thought, I do know one super tech savvy guy, maybe I can reach out to him.

Then the dad stepped in.

He asked me to show him the app and I showed him what happened and how the paper came up just as 1 page and the letter “e.”

He did the same undo thing and it just went blank.

Then he quit the app and toggled around and found a back up in Word and saved it, cut and pasted the entirety to an email and sent it to me.

HOLY MOTHER OF GOD.

I have my paper back.

This is not an experience I ever want to have again.

I have another app that I bought and paid for at the beginning of the semester, but being a little tech phobic I never even opened it up to use it, relying on the comfortable and known to do the work for this semester.

No more of that shit.

I will be opening up Scrivener and not using Perrla any more.

I actually couldn’t bear to look at it tonight when I got home.

It’s safe.

It’s not going anywhere.

I have a file.

I have it backed up.

I am taking a break.

I need to do that.

I’m going to post my little blog.

How nice it is to be here again, sweet, sweet blog, I don’t get around to you so much anymore.

This PhD semester is kicking my ass.

And.

I am seriously grateful that I get to be pursuing a PhD and that, thank every freaking God, deity, Goddess, Universe, Spirit et al, that my paper is still amongst the living.

Because if it weren’t I’d be seriously screwed and if you think you don’t see much of me now, there would be none of me the rest of the semester.

Thank god my paper was saved.

Thank freaking god.

And now.

Netflix.

I’m taking the rest of the night off.

I have earned a god damn study break.

Seriously.