run-off
i was sitting in my room, looking out the rear window and i saw the roof of the small house in my backyard. the sun is bright today and some of the snow is melting, and on the roof was the left-over water, the places where the shingles were still wet just above the line of melting, receding snow.

somehow it put me in mind of northampton. the porch at the House of A Thousand Losers, a second-floor apartment, was set into the roof of the first floor's porch, and i remember seeing the same watermarks on the roof of the lower porch, the same watermarks on the lesbian house across the street (so-called because in the two years we lived across the street, not a single member of the ever-changing, constantly-rotating group of tenants was not of that persuasion), and it sort of... it turned into a metaphor that i wasn't prepared for.

if you think me pretentious for writing this, well, there's nothing i can do about that. because my own life was suddenly reflected in the slowly-evaporating watermarks on the roof of the little house in my backyard - the time i spent in northampton, the people i knew and the experiences we shared, they were all real and in many ways, life-changing and -affecting. i will never discount their importance in my life. but in the wake of mom's death and my own subsequent hiding, from an emotional and psychological perpsective those years weren't much more than water thawing and running off a roof. i've not yet figured out if it's the asphalt below the snow that matters, or what goes on in the house below the roof, but lately i have felt like layers are shedding, something undefined is emerging. funny that i only found that in melting snow.

the story hasn't ended yet. not even reached a midpoint. but i'm starting to see the shape of it. i feel better already.