I've tried to keep up, really.

Every day I wrote something down by hand but
it's been a bit too much to post it for all
the world to gawp and gape at.

Therefore, I'm taking a sabbatical of sorts.

Please don't take this abandonment personally.
I'll still draw and write and the like but it's
come time to live this life behind closed doors
and sealed lips.

Maybe I'll be able to return one day when all this
makes sense again. That would be lovely, eh?

Much love to you all, you beautiful strangers.

Yours,
Lolita

Happy Birthday Tad. Hopefully you'll get your
gift in time. I can never judge with air mail.

I’m holding
clutching
dragging, flip flops slapping as I
pitter-patter-scatter between
majestic scenes of pageant-majesty
one moment to dampen
the dirty pages
I’ve licked
and touched my fingers to
and stained my tongue with ink
while I
analyzed, justified stars

My first trip into town today.

It’s a little place, not too far from Aunt
Cheryl’s home, but still far enough. You can’t
see it’s lights shining through her windows and
that’s all she asks.

They had a Wal-Mart, naturally. As all small
towns tend to, the people hardly able to keep
food on their tables but damned if they wouldn’t
do it under the daily barrage of falling prices.

For their protection and continued patronage,
of course.

I found only crappy supplies there but they
would have to do. My stories are itching to
tell themselves but they can’t do it without
a tongue of alizarin and gold.

Besides, all my shit's back home and I don't want
to go back and get it just yet.

The empty light soothed my troubled eyes,
for once not too painfully bright. The nights
glow brilliant blue and black, throbbing-beating-
primal-nighttime pulse, out here. I sat atop
the roof of the shed, staring out at the
nothing-everything and reveling.

Renovations are complete.

Painting and tidying up, bringing in some
furniture that Aunt Cheryl had kept after the
divorce in a rental garage.

No need to tell me. It was all Aunt Cheryl’s
way of saying I had a place as long as I needed
it. No awkward words of lack-luster information.
We both just knew.

The message’s far shinier this way.

I have my own space. My own place.

I think I’ll paint again, soon.

More cleaning. This time I had no troubles
falling asleep.

The evil that resided in Aunt Cheryl’s
malicious and corrupted heart showed itself
this morning, hours before the sun dared to
rise.

The cow came waltzing in and shook me awake,
singing a particularly obnoxious song about
"bright shining faces” while tugging and tossing
the covers far from my gripping, grasping,
desperate hands.

The rest of the day improved little.

She made me clean out the shed behind her
house, all filled with memories and old-lifes
and dust and past-shards.

No explanation, just “do it, Lita.”

Oddly enough I couldn’t sleep, even after that
hard day of work.

I caught up on some reading I had meant to do.

It was quite pleasant, actually.

The reading, not the work.

Definitely not the work.

Slept all day today. Yesterday, too. And the
day before.

I just couldn't bear to stand up, is all.