Well, here I am again. I did not think my hiatus would last for so long, but we did not have an Internet connection until yesterday afternoon, and thumb-typing on a phone is torture. I can barely spell my own name that way.

But now I am living in Portland.

The apartment is still a jostling crowd of boxes and tables and stereo equipment. Workers are arriving today to install a new rug in the second bedroom. The stove turned out to have a gas leak so is currently unusable. But a clock is ticking on the mantle. A little cat is curled up on a yellow chair. The collected works of William Shakespeare rest in a bookcase. A son sleeps behind a closed door. My favorite Mason jar holds a bouquet of fresh parsley. The dishes are clean on the shelves of the doll's kitchen. The sheets are churning downstairs in the laundry room.

Out the back window I see houses and cars and icy sidewalks and no-parking signs. Out the front window I see the cold blue of Casco Bay, its cluster of piny islands, the curve of Falmouth to the north, old Fort Allen to the east. I see a long horizon of bright winter sky.

Directly under the front window, a backhoe is digging out a tree stump. A city bus creaks and sighs to a halt. A dog refuses to give up his Frisbee.

Meanwhile, the clock ticks and ticks.