5th saturday in ohio

whatever was i thinking that a day unplugged from this campaign wouldn't risk peeling back the glorious distraction from my shit that this trip has so far been. back at the headquarters after my afternoon excursion to the movies, i am enveloped now by the sheer chaos that is homecoming -- the buckeyes' big game against penn state -- with this neighbourhood and surrounding streets ablaze with the fervor of team spirit, of misspent youth, of obnoxia nervosa. it is amidst this jarring, surreal soundtrack that i attempt to shove back under the folds the coils and batting that anxiously poked through today. where've i been, they wonder - almost audibly - and who do i think i am leaving them untended this damn long. and i well know the answer: i am as deserving as anyone of a fresh break from old pain, thank you very much, and so i have managed to find myself as sublimely immersed in political passions as anyone could wish.

but handy they are, my neglected bits, or i might not have been so rocked - gutted, even - by the poem caty read me just now:

What lips my lips have kissed, and where, and why,
I have forgotten, and what arms have lain
Under my head till morning; but the rain
Is full of ghosts tonight, that tap and sigh
Upon the glass and listen for reply,

And in my heart there stirs a quiet pain
For unremembered lads that not again
Will turn to me at midnight with a cry.
Thus in winter stands the lonely tree,
Nor knows what birds have vanished one by one,
Yet knows its boughs more silent than before:
I cannot say what loves have come and gone,
I only know that summer sang in me
A little while, that in me sings no more.

- Edna St. Vincent Millay