i'm here to take you now

it's friday, and i don't feel the usual glee i do on fridays. i've been sick all week with rigid concentration upon finishing my work and then doing nothing. it's been all kleenex, couch, pills, bread, nutella, tossing-and-turning, half-sleep, waking-up-by-terry's-texts, sleeping and barely sleeping. the weather's changing, and terry's missing some of the real days of fall, days that are invariably so, so scant. i'm missing them too. everything in the house is untouched since jeanne left. my overnight bag and dirty clothes strewn on the floor of my room, half-unpacked. i think i dreamt of her every night since she left. yeah, it's like that. the blankets jeanne used still lie, stacked upon the rarely-sat-on recliner. the folds of the blankets look like the pancakes from cloudy with a chance of meatballs. for some reason, i can never forget the iconography from that book. like the picture of the children, their faces blue-tinged with cold, forcing down peanut butter and jelly sandwiches for the nth day. i almost feel nauseous just thinking of that drawing. and terry's vacation-cast-off items dot the house, almost as if he had never flown to north carolina. like i just asked him to put away the dirty socks, and i'm waiting. technology nowadays brings everyone closer, and through the swiftness of text messaging it sometimes feels like he's just on the other couch, texting me so i don't have to turn around to converse. but maybe only once have we sat on separate couches here, so i know that many miles really do lie between us. i'm driving to wyandotte, to ann arbor, to home today, and i'm so gracious the sky's thick, thick blue without even one cloud over ferndale, michigan.