Between

Photo by Adennoiur Ait, 2018

The weather’s not softly mild like spring nor crisp cold like winter. Today is between seasons. Like the weather, I’m between seasons, adrift in a foggy space with no-end or beginning, a space that separates me from what is satisfying, and buoyant, and the despondency of depression. A haze blurs my focus. I look but perceive nothing. My thinking is numb and I feel unsightly.

 This morning, I woke from a dream in which my sister invited me to join her, then rebuffed me and wouldn’t speak. The scene changes. I’m in the middle of a party, but I’m invisible. People laugh and chat, toasting to success. They don't hear my words when I join in. I’m alone but surrounded. I shake myself awake. Maybe it’s the foot surgery, now five days past, that fills me with aloneness. The foot is not acutely painful anymore; no need for drugs, but it aches like overworked shoulders when I too slow or too fast. My legs don’t itch, but a scarlet rash blankets them; it’s source unknown. I sit down to write but end up circling in a river of words that leads nowhere. I attempt to book a flight using travel credits only to be rejected, so I wait in chat limbo, hoping for answers and rescue. So goes this day between seasons.

 Tomorrow the prediction is a return to winter, smashing temperatures back to freezing. Perhaps that will clear the air and snap me back so I can jump out of the between.