I had a dream last night about resurrection. My hamster was alive; we were wrong about her being dead. I think this was in part a wish-fulfillment dream and in part a sort of shadowy psychic residue left in my brain after watching a sad video of a mother chimpanzee reacting to death of her infant.

There are so many ways in which a bird and a girl are similar.

Of course we all write too much about birds. We write about them because they disappear. We have to figure out a way to be sad about it.

I think briefly of smoke stacks, snow, ash. I fantasize about papering over every surface with pretty patterned paper.

Sleep is like levitation. Girls can levitate. This secret power is explored at slumber parties, but then we all forget.

We used to do back flips on the trampoline. In the dark after drinking warm beer. It seemed we went higher than the pines.

The thing I miss most about South Carolina is the pines. That and the humid, evening air during summer. How the air feels like the cicadas humming. We write too much about cicadas, but why not? I've only written about them once or twice.

I put my name on a list for a baby teddy bear hamster. Her name will be Baroness Petunia Muffin Merriweather and she will sleep in pretty pink air.