Again, Again

What happens when your head splits open

and the bird flies out, its two notes deranged?

You got better, I got better,

wildflowers rimmed the crater

glitter glitter glitter.

-Dean Young

Last night I fought against the end of Sunday. As the weeks begin to feel longer, heavier, I feel a resistance to an end of what weekends bring: films, walks, baking, cooking together, coffee shop dates, bedroom picnics. We put on our flashiest dance this weekend, watching films in succession, pairing the lovely Ms. Billie Jean and all her Pat Benatar soundtrack glory with the documentary Objectified (highly recommended). We made meals of snacks, snuggled back into the bedroom, the kaleidoscopic array of Pyrex bowls filled with tidbits floating precariously on flannel sheets signaling Fall. The windows are rattling again, my seasonal indicator of change, but we've got quilts and potpie, warmth in multiple forms. One bus ride from now there will be discussions of drafts and grades, and the calculations of expectations will feel simultaneously restricting and redeeming. And I'm thinking about all the talk of sustainability, and the cover of the reader I've been asking my students to pillage, it's play - sustaining words - and I wonder, are these keeping us afloat, or teaching us how to buoy the text? And I think of what sustains me, and what I sustain, and Monday, again, feels a little less troubling, and a little more part of the deal.