You Don't Have to Start Here

thoughts on transformation and staying still

Esmé if she were Anna Karina.

In our bedroom, we hear so many birds twittering in the yard. There’s bamboo to hide them; there’s a trellis covered in vines where they could easily build a nest. With spring upon us, C and I wait eagerly for the finches to reproduce and bring new, scraggly finches into the world—scraggly finches that will eventually turn sleek and adult and live adult lives of their own, while C continues to heal day by day from last year’s diagnosis of bone marrow cancer. His recent hospital stay was due to gallstones made not of cholesterol, but of malformed blood cells that his bone marrow has been spewing. He sent me an email his surgeon had sent that was accompanied by a photo—admittedly, I wasn’t eager to see a photo and found it repulsive; I almost retaliated by sending him a photo of my most recent ovarian cyst.

Where there is spring, there are changes—things that grow and sprout and bloom. Of all the seasons, I used to like autumn best, but I’ve seen enough sadness that I now prefer transformations that bring life: not only birds and blooms, but also my friends’ new babies, the books that my friends publish (please pre-order R.O. Kwon’s queer, kinky, ambitious-women novel, Exhibit, because it’s ridiculously brilliant and everyone needs to read it*), and the events my friends put on. I was going to go to D.C. in April, but I’m now staying at home to watch over C, who needs me more than I’d anticipated. But I am growing too—I am steadfastly working on the novel, which feels noisy and confusing at the moment but will find its way, I am sure—and I feel myself aging as I think more and more about mortality.