Connect

My computer charger lies abandoned in a corner of the office. All weekend I intend to go pick it up, to connect me again to the digital world where I spend so much time, but as the hours pass, a quiet calm sinks into my nerve endings. I leave it be. Instead, the days fill with books, with the steady beat of the typewriter as steam comes on in regular cycles. I thumb through collections of poetry, pages hot and dried from standing on top of the radiator. I am, as ever, shamed by the comparison of my lousy words to theirs, but the camaraderie of being so madly in love with words warms me. Outside, it begins to snow. We have a place for you here, they whisper from across the oceans, and you know they mean it. We'll take care of you. 

But I ran along the river late last night, when no one else was out, and the water was perfectly still and the air completely quiet, the night so black above the skyscrapers that you could see the stars, and I thought, I'm fine. 

 I'm already taken care of, you see.