Take it if you want it.

Burning in the solar plexus, heat behind the eyes, last time I looked in the mirror the wrinkles were looking back, I looked so tired. Forty-five minutes ago, mid-morning.

There is an emptiness inside, I can feel the gravity like a black hole pulling in solar detritus from nearby galaxies. I haven't slept well for a week and the tiredness is dragging me down, exposing the emptiness to harsh elements.

So many thoughts pulsing through my weary head, it makes it hard to think. Perhaps at this point action is better than forethought anyway.

I know what I need to do. I can feel it, every time I think about it I know it's the right decision. But I'm scared. Or maybe intimidated. Afraid, unsure, weak. I wake up and look at those wrinkles and think of the daylight that all of this indecision is burning and I tell myself to give a hard tug on my bootstraps. Pull yourself, up, out. Jump in because you know you can swim. Hell, you even know how to fly.

In April, if you care for me, be sure that I am enrolled in the academy. Actually, check on me March. Tell me "1939" and I'll remember.

And in the sea there swims another thought, or maybe it's just an emotion, and it sucks me up into its salty swirl and occasionally I am absorbed by the undertow. Sometimes I don't surface for hours. And it's a face, with a name, and a look and so much potency. And its my mind that, when I do resurface, imprisons me with the agony of what if and how and what does it all mean. And all I want is to go back, go back, go back, if just for one more small piece. One more something to cling to while I'm back here in the present.

There is an epic battle going on inside. I hope I win.

The devil in blue.

Hard-faced glass reflects lines etched with makeup and dark circles under eyes. The light comes down from the ceiling in all directions and is a sickly blue-green. Makes white walls look yellow and skin appear jaundiced. The profile is more angular now than it's been, but certainly just as insecure. The flourescence casts deep shadows into so many scars left behind, never quite out of sight. And hair, like wheat, and as untame as its reflection's spirit.

She is a solid block of steel on the inside, encased in something soft and vulnerable. She still cries when it hurts but still bites her lips to fight it down. She is smart but afraid to show it, and keeps far too much inside the steel, away from daylight. She craves acknowledgement, acceptance, recognition, but thinks the need for it is her biggest weakness. She wants to function independently of the approval of others. She hasn't yet realized that she can't. Hopefully someday she will.

It would make things a lot easier for me, on the other side of the glass.

Open the vents.

You wake up at the butt crack of dawn, but not even because the sun won't be up for another two hours. You swill your coffee, go through your routine and go to work. It's a damn good job, too. Sure, a lot of the people that you work with are totally nuts and some of them should probably seek out counseling, but what you're doing is making a difference in a very tangible way and also, you really love it. It is regimented, it has protocols that you follow, each cause has its own effect. There is a very black and white meaning there. And it fits you. It feels familiar in a way that nothing really has before.

But the thing is that it's really draining. Especially now because you still don't know exactly what you're doing. Keeping all the dashes and dots together in your mind to form a coherent overall picture takes up a lot of your brain's CPU, which in turn takes up a lot of your energy. The day is long and you don't really get any breaks. Which is fine, it's great, it's kind of relieving to always be counted on, but it is tiring.

Eight hours are over and it's time to go home, except you're not, you're going to your second job. This one is a bit more frenetic. This one is like the opposite of the first one, there's no structure, your supervisor is a very loosely woven group of loosely put together people, and they've not given you a very good sense of what your responsibilities are. They seem to change every day, and as the paperwork that you were told wasn't yours to work on piles up, the stories change, job functions shift. It makes you crazy and you want to rip out your hair and throw things.

And by this point you have no brain capacity left anyway. You're tired, your face feels all oily and you are fucking hungry. Your eyes burn. You want to go home and watch tv or read or do abso-fucking-lutely nothing, but you can't. You will be here trying to connect invisible dots until after the sun goes back down. You don't even get to see your husband all that much, let alone do anything as novel as cooking.

And then you find yourself hoping that a permanent slot opens up in your first job, by hook or by crook, that you can fill. And you hold onto that hope like all those times you prayed to God that so-and-so would have a crush on you back in grade school. Even if it means that someone else would be fired. And you look at your shoes and you don't know what to think. Did something on the inside change?

People, I am burning at both ends right now.