(idea) by junkpile Wed Oct 18 2000 at 5:16:01

Bill hands me a envelope and I am confused. Payday, already? I'm no martyr, I need the money, the envelope goes in my safest pocket. Another two weeks have zoomed by like something with its own sinister engine, something that does not ask me if it can truck on past.

On the phone we try to figure the last time we saw each other. I come up with Thursday. Anna has more of a head for time and she proves, by what movie was on tv that night, that it was last month. The baby is nine weeks old, she says. Come see her. Please. I am gripped by the terror that when I do go, Toccoa will be sitting up, talking, married.

How do I get rid of the twinges of probably having missed the last perfect picnic day of 2000. How did I get past missing the (one) snow day without taking any pictures of it. That still bugs me. Was January, seems like last week. This goes on and on, faster.

This summer has been volatile, kaleidoscopic, an onion. I don't know what happened when, or when it started, or how we got here. The rush of time used to terrify me constantly. Now it only terrifies me most of the time. Still, I have moments - we have moments, I can say - where we can sit back, lie back, on bed or grass or each other, try to figure out what happened when, and fail, and go silent, happy in a confusion of shared time, even if it's rocketing, even when it scares us. We keep each other in the same moment. We keep each other. Everything will change. It is our job to keep our hands strong in each other's grip.

I like it! 9 C!s