Halloween.
I want to write but I’m exhausted. Exhausted by this day and this month, only an hour away from being over.
OWL’s owl costume that I started last year, a seemingly simple Martha Stewart piece, sits in the same state it was in this time last year – pieces. The three sections of each wing unattached. The elastic bands for securing the wings to the arms missing in action. The ears cut but without a hat.
Start the day in a haze of 3 hours of sleep (my fault) and Larabars and dozing on the couch between readings of Where the Wild Things Are and Mr. Brown Can Moo Can You? and Farmer Grover. We brunch on 15th – OWL drinking cream from the small dark green pitcher, using a big fork to stab eggs & polenta & sausage. Excitedly signing egg and meat and milk while shrieking moo. Booster seat in the wooden booth. Pointing at the walls. Bird! Dog (really a deer)! That! 
Steps into his store-bought hand-me-down elephant suit without struggle. Wiggling tail as we walk down the street. He says tickteet before we get inside any of the stores, and I help him hold open his canvas tote bag with the jungle print. The bag I sewed for him. An October sun is shining and warm and the clouds overhead white. Red and yellow leaves line the dry sidewalks. My elephant waves hi and bye to people who stop and smile, and to people who hurry past with iPod buds wedged into their ears, eyes down. We miss our friends for trick or treating, so we do none. At 8:30 pm we slip back into the suit. He visits the upstairs neighbors. I let him walk our street in the dark, standing a few paces behind as he teeters forward, beeps into reverse, and trips over the cracks in the sidewalks.
And for all that perfectness, for all the sweet wiggles of his tail and shrieks of delight, I can’t help but feel the sting of having not done it quite right. Of doing it alone. A splinter that is still growing out from under my skin. Surface unbroken.
The rain starts to come down, moving with force and sound. This day and this month less than 30 minutes from over. This moment already vanished. In five days I turn 33. I remember that time last year, at dinner with family and friends, then-husband turned traitor sitting at our house in which he no longer lived, watching our baby. I drank coffee then wine. Walked among Calder sculptures suspended from the ceiling and encased in glass. I wanted to be swallowed up by the earth. Immersed in culture and life and the rain and the cold and my sister’s umbrella. But I felt so dead and sad and hopeless. I smiled. I ate. Laughed. I even remember having fun. But tonight, in some ways, I still feel the same. Like there’s some answer out there, out there and not in here. Like I could be different. Like I should be different.
Heart and soul on the floor in pieces. Partially sewn together, still needing to be joined. The anchor to hold it together MIA in the closet-that-holds-everything, in a pile among stacks of books and toys and and fabric and grocery bags.
Tomorrow it’s rabbits if I can remember.
Travels with OWL 