this is what shows up when I blink

I have spent an entire minute hunting around for the storage key, the one with the bright blue tag. The one that was sitting, all the while, six inches from my right elbow. I blame this on the dimness of the sky (remember the summer when we could leave the office lights off all morning?), and the seething hatred I felt toward my alarm this morning (I'm usually so much more charitable). And I blame the train that stopped me as I biked up the hill (I was already running late) and the smell of the hand lotion I have at my desk (it creates such a cloying thick fug, thig fuck).
I have been drinking my coffee black because I have been getting over sugar (it's an amicable breakup).
And I miss my brother. I really, really, really miss my brother. I'll leave the parentheses off that last one because if I got started I'd run on about needing irreverence and rhythmic tapping hands and the attack of Nova Scotia and a baseline for the harmony that springs up when my family is together. I mean that literally. I mean I miss his low notes.

When I plan ahead I start wondering about claws and brown fur--I'm going to be a lion one week from today. I start wondering about one week from today + twelve hours, when I'll be unloading into the house that has already been sold and spending the second-to-last weekend ever in the red room at the left end of the upstairs hallway. I dreamed last night, in one of the few hours my eyes were closed, of the pond in the park behind the church behind the house. There's an island in the middle, and I used to cross over the bridge and slide between the bushes at the far side of the island and watch a family of seven baby ducks. It's been years, and I still seize up when I think of those ducks, because over the days that summer their number kept dwindling. One day there was only one. I named him Pip because I liked the sharp, cute sound of those Ps and I daydreamed about catching him and taking him home with me. I didn't. I don't know whose meal he ended up being. THIS is what I think about.
I think about the maze bridge and the river and the willow tree and the way it feels (has always felt) to run full speed down the halls at my dad's church when the building was empty. You could start on the carpet of the altar up front and push off and sprint through the sanctuary and through the double doors and down the hall ahead. If you wore socks you could stop your legs but keep going at speed, all the way down into the door at the end. The mat would stop me a second before I'd fall forward into the doorframe. I can think of how that smells. And I think: I'll be cold. In one week I'll be sleeping in the red room in the Bed of Sleep, and I'll be by myself and I'll be cold.