Burning in the corner is the only one who dreams he had you with him

When I was a kid I had secret rooms inside my bedroom. I had a side table next to my bed, for my lamp and pile of books and it was just a three legged round table with a tablecloth and I would lie on the floor on my stomach with only my head and shoulders under the table and it was a bar. I used the fisher-price plastic cups and pitcher, they were dark orange, and I poured out water into the cups and talked to an imaginary bartender except for when I was the bartender and I talked to imaginary customers. My mother only let me play with water but once I decided I wasn't going to spill anything, so I filled the pitcher with red koolaid from the fridge and carried it upstairs to my bar and, of course, spilled it. There was a red stain for years. Luckily it was under the side table and my mother didn't discover it until I was a teenager, years later, when we moved furniture to paint the room, and I could laugh it off as some childhood clumsiness. Another time I created an altar and kept cubes of white bread and grape juice for communion. Another time I built a room in the closet using blankets as walls, I hung them up using pants hangers. I built it on a summer afternoon when the power had gone out in the neighborhood and I curled up and took a nap and woke up sweating because the air conditioning had been off for hours.

This weekend I spent a lot of time talking to plants, or maybe rather listening to them, I mean, sort of listening to them the way I listen to underwear online that insists I buy them (I've done that too) but also, maybe more than that and I can't help but think about Stevie Wonder's album The Secret Life of Plants. Maybe he was right. But anyway, I planted a lot, I dug up lots of weeds, I pulled down lots of branches and trimmed the tree. I drilled holes into the concrete ledge outside my window to hang planters full of herbs. I have lots of basil in my freezer right now. I put basil in the peas I cooked tonight. But not on the steak -- that was just marinated in old red wine and than salt and peppered to medium rare perfection. I could use about 4 more days alone. Maybe then I'd get to more reading and writing done on top of the planting and cooking and eating and thrifting and walking and napping and other random things I've done this weekend.