I love the birds here, sitting on my front stoop. I am ready to move on from this apartment, but will miss it too. Baby’s first rent. The tree and the mailbox. The red doors and the dirty welcome mat that was here when we arrived.

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Last night I went to half-price burger night with L and R. We went to her apartment after and sat on the stiff carpet next to her bookshelf until the light fell out of the blinded window. After that, a party for E’s birthday. Everyone was a little drunk and ridiculously good to me. Uncomfortable and nice at the same time, the foamy beer and citrus vodka pooling in my cheeks.

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I rode the 7:02 bus to the garden. The light was perfect — how it’s always somehow more saturated, but dimmer, as it sets. Somehow yellow and rose and gray together on the page of my book. I’ll miss taking the bus every day: the kind drivers, the windows. I was glad to need it last night; the driver was the one who never turns on the rear interior lights and I sat in the pitch, smiling, lucky.

The gingko in this garden is one of my favorites. The magnolia, the tall holly. That centuries-old live oak rebaking under its own suns.

I have that feeling right now — wabi-sabi, tender, soft, somehow tough simultaneously. Maybe not made for this place or world, but living here anyway, determined. Or how I feel when I read Jack Gilbert’s poetry, stomach open and small beautiful beetles kissing my insides, and birds.

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By midnight I was dancing, my toes chipping off from my body, shoots angling away from their stalks, heavy-headed. The carpet striking matches on my heels, on the scar I got six years ago dragging the tops of my feet across the floor.