How do I rouse myself from this land of constant dreaming? Try as I might, I can never completely catch something solid to hold on to.

It’s raining. I can hear it pattering against the flimsy tin roof, the sound of each raindrop magnified until the storm is disproportionate to the noise it’s making against the eaves. I used to worry that the roof would just fall in. But that was ages ago.

I don’t worry any more.

I stopped keeping track of things the day they took my books away, carting them off in big cardboard boxes. Not labled, of course. Not organized.

Never the way I like. Never up to me.

Not now. Not anymore.

They took down the clocks shortly after they took away my books. But they don’t know that I’ve got something of a clock buried deep inside of me. They stopped up the windows. But somehow, someway, my heart just knows what’s when.

As for where, I wouldn’t know.

Somedays I can hear the mumbling down the hall. But always, always, I keep the note she slipped under the door.