Midsummer's Eve

I woke up unfevered this morning. I got up, tentatively, thinking "And how do we feel this morning?" like my own brisk nurse and realized with a start that the answer was - finally - much better. I actually left the house today! It was disturbingly thrilling.

I used to think of myself as a poet, since that's what I wrote and all. I thought of myself as a writer before I had a blog and I think of myself as a writer, still. But. I used to like hugging the secret of writing to me and now there's nothing secret at all: I'm just one of many.

We change. We do not always like what we change into.

When I realized this morning that I was no longer sick, that the fever had gone, I carefully made my way to the mirror to see how I looked after several days of sickness. And the answer was, of course, "pretty gross." But a quick shower fixed that and now I look like my regular self again - a little tired, maybe, a little pale - but my own self, in my own skin.

We are going to spend tonight building a fairy house outside - if the thunderstorm that's coming doesn't - and tonight the fairies will descend upon their new houses, filling them up with glass animals and wooden beads and then we'll be in the feverish haze of summer for weeks and weeks, flowers and travels and berries clutched in little juice-stained hands and then things will change again.