New Moon

There are three reasons why I have not given up today.

1. De la soul

2. The half moon that stretched itself across the woman's face, her blood red hijab giving life as she ran across the street in front of my car.

3. In school, my first grader grabbed my knee as we sat banging our backs against the lockers.
Ms. Love, tell me about the day of the dead again?

I knew his father was there with us. Angels, souls, spirits, whatever the fuck you want to call them; they look the same everywhere I tell you.

We went back to my room and he cut a heart out. I swear it was still pumping. It had his fathers name on it and he said he would be extra careful with it on the bus so that it would still pump when he gave it to his mother. This was the second time he had sat still in my classroom.

The water is never still. It moves and allows us to move. Yesterday, I heard that people were caged in kennels like dogs at Standing Rock. It is 2016. It is almost 2017 and we haven't stopped taking from the native people of this land. White people still take like addiction; like there is no other way. When will we realize, we wake up alone?

Tomorrow is halloween and I am seeing too many skeletons.  I cannot tell which one's have crawled out of my own storage space, and which ones are plastic and hammered into lawns.

Last night I faded in the car as a friend told me about his time in solitary confinement. I drove home out of body. There was one sliver of moon left in the dish. He had told me to take it but I couldn't. I wasn't hungry.

I have started binge eating again. If I had to pinpoint the cause, I would say the brevity of human life. And how some moments seem to be slipping. They haven't quite been anxiety attacks and I haven't cried in months, until yesterday when I knew I had to give my dog away. Panic was my skeleton yesterday.

But today is only today. And there is nothing dead here. I have at least three reasons not to give up.

4. Today is a new moon.