On Staying

Snow being dense and thick and covering of the place I was to go this weekend, I did not go. Sometimes it is worrisome to go, dear reader, even when one's bag is already packed. Particularly over many bridges on a bus in thick, silent snow. Nobody wants to die on a bus is what I am saying. Sometimes it is important to stay.

When staying, it is sometimes important to wear one's pajamas the whole weekend through. (Long coats and tall boots cover pajamas. Hats cloak oily curls.) When everyone already thinks one is out of town, one can do as one pleases. Taking to one's bed with scissors and glue and red felt, for example. Taking to bed with good coffee and Cary Grant and a good, thick book. Searching drugstores for brown polish and holding three polishes in one's hand like jewels, deliberating. In painting one's toenails a downy, minky brown--the brown lavender would be if lavender had thought to be brown. In standing on a pier until the cold winter wind blows tears out your eyes. Sometimes it is important to stay, to hide. To consider What Is to Come.

And when the people call and the people say "WhereareyouWhatareyoudoingWhenwillyoubedone," sometimes it is important to say, "I'm not telling. I'm not telling you or anybody." And then to go back to bed.