2.27.26

The first and only time I visited Z in Santa Barbara, he asked me when the last time I'd been in love. I didn't want to admit I wasn't in love with the man I was seeing at the time so I asked, What do you mean by love? Z replied: Love is a willingness to be changed by somebody. I got really sick that night so Z kept bringing me hot water with lemon and honey. I fell asleep to the sound of rain tapping on the roof. It felt good to be back in California. 

Today I'm cleaning as if I am preparing for a new life to arrive. There are these pants that never felt like they fit, and this napkin where I calculated the amount of money I'd need to live for the rest of the year. This towel and this big pot of water have got to go. And why did I save all these sheets of paper for? These gestures remind me of J. Z said he'd be mailing me all of the poetry I'd sent her. J had  printed out all my poems to read and annotate. Two weeks ago Z and his family spread J's ashes in the garden around her house. When I receive the poems I sent her, I'll burn them too so she knows where to find them if she goes looking for them, wherever she's gone now. She told me before she died: You have so much to live for...and I cried because I couldn't believe her. But she was right. It's as if in the moment she headed towards the end, she could also see beyond it. A month ago, O told me he met my father in a dream. It made me cry. Am I really the inheritor of love? When I tell people, We are all destined for love, could it really include myself as well? 

It seems that we never really know anybody else, we only see as far inside as they allow. Last winter, G wrote: Even the hand that reaches through the dark is yours. 

I'm not sure what else to say today because I'm getting hungry and the sun is shining outside as if I should go and step into it. There's the same hawk circling above. What he sees all day perched way up there, I couldn't even begin to imagine.