99 Words for 99 Days: June 11

11. Things to Wonder While Tired

If I went to sleep at four in the afternoon, how many days would it be before I could go to bed at night?If I fell over backwards in my desk chair for real all the way, would I actually break my neck? If I could still talk, would I tell the person who finally found me that I was trying not to sit up too straight while removing my legs from the top of the desk and that I cantilevered myself just a bit too far in an effort not to exert any extra effort? (Probably not.)

99 Words for 99 Days: June 10

10. Tired

He'll save the Indian food for later and so this week my Sunday night won't smell like curry. He says he'll just share the mushrooms with me – because it's already fifty o'clock. It sure is. Every bit of me is tired and every hour of the last few days is sitting heavily between my shoulder blades and rubbing against my lower eyelids. It's good that lungs and hearts and livers keep on working even when the words get stuck in lumps of balled up tired and thoughts all start to sound like the gibberish of dream declarations.

99 Words for 99 Days: June 9

9. Thank you, Sisters

I found the graves today. After class, I drove to the opening in the wall, and I parked my car and got out. I walked into the garden and I saw one brand new, soft place. One freshly laid little spread of flowers. Calla lilies. When did they begin to bury sisters here, I wondered? 1908 – or thereabouts. I cannot now remember because I was too busy saying thank you. Because of their lives, I can have this life. Thank you for loving this place. For loving your students. For loving each other. Faithful sisters, I thank you.

99 Words for 99 Days: June 8

8. Numerically Speaking

 

There are now two hours before class time, two class times left for Technology and Power, four or five pages of a final Philosophy essay to write, two new books from Powell's about the history of rubber sitting in the car, two books returned to this library, six (or was it seven?) books checked out from the library at home while I worked for four hours before I made three stops on the way to school, and this class will last for three hours tonight and seven hours tomorrow, and then one evening left to finish the unfinishable essay.

99 Words for 99 Days: June 7

7. Better

What's the point? It's all broken. All the systems are broken. No one ever listens to anyone anyway and we have all these problems and it's because our government has gotten too big. Or maybe it's because the government is under the thumb of lobbyists and donors. Or it's because of too much war. Or it's because the Maayan calendar prophesied doomsday and Nostradamus said we were all going to die and the End Times are here and God's judgment's begun. Or … maybe this is a day like any other, 

and we are meant to make it 

better.