Saturday again. The weeks rumble by so quickly; I can barely catch my breath before they're over.

This morning I woke to a slick crust of snow, a crow shouting, a tangerine sunrise over an invisible bay. Where does the day go from here?

Last night, Friday night, in my snug kitchen, I stirred polenta and T hung out and listened to me read aloud the melodramatic conclusion of Conan-Doyle's "Adventure of the Speckled Band." Somehow he has never heard these Strand stories before: they are a window into 1880s England, a window into an idea of brilliance and of a very unequal friendship, but they are also quite silly and filled with odd characters. He seems to be enjoying them so I will give him "The Red-Headed League" next.

Now he is upstairs, sighing in his sleep, and I am downstairs, sighing in my waking, sipping my little cup of coffee, thinking about storytellers, trying to stretch out my lunge-sore leg muscles, wondering, for the thousandth millionth time, how did I get here?

A vase of daffodils slowly opens into gold.

Time bunches up around me, like a badly pleated skirt.