Snow on the way today--just a few inches, but maybe enough to cover the bare ground and the lingering frozen ice lumps. It's cold out there, will be cold all week, and I need to grocery-shop today, need to dig into an editing project, need to wind myself back into the world of work.

My long poem is still reaching out its tentacles. Teresa had some smart revision suggestions, so I spent much of yesterday afternoon re-entangling myself in the poem's coils. It's emotionally exhausting work, as if the poem is bleeding me.

Poem as leech. The metaphor feels apt.

Anyway, I've got to push revision out of my thoughts and let employment and house cares take over. And I need to find something else to read: I have been devouring sprawling novels like boxes of candy. Over the past three days I read All the Light We Cannot See from beginning to end--more than 500 pages. I read while I cooked, while I folded laundry. I have been reading like a 12-year-old, completely gobsmacked. No matter what's been in my hands, I've immersed myself in it, without judgment.

I'm not sure what this reveals about my state of mind, that I'm mainlining novels and bleeding poem. I will say that I feel kind of fragile, liable to burst into tears at any moment. Probably I ought be relieved that duty calls. Probably everyone around me ought to be relieved.