A friend is in my head with a made-up voice that scratches against my ear. I hear Charles Bukowski as I read his poems. He wrote: as the poems go into the thousands you realize that you've created very little.

Sand across glass, grinding, his voice is inside.

Again I remember speaking on the phone and laughing when someone asked how I get all the words people say. How do I write it so fast? And articles … isn't writing difficult? I say, mostly, it's a lot of erasing. The lines, dashes, and whorls of letters and smudged ink that remain mean enough to type out and print, I suppose. It's an article. Its ink dries and fades in the sun and the meaning is gone for the reader before the last word.

A coworker was trying to compile a brief summary of our staff at the newspaper. Didn't I help with the video and website content? J. asked. Yup. Ok, he said, what else?

Honestly, I just shoot stuff and repeat stuff, I told him. With a camera and a pen and no narrator's voice or poetic meaning to my arrival or my photos and story, I just look at the words again, wondering how I might make them a little better.

Better to me means less explanation. Draw me a picture of meaning sliced and rare, please.

Walking through water with my cold feet cringing, sloshing sounds reach ahead and behind. People's possessions rest in crooked, uncomfortable places either a few feet or miles from where they sat before water lifted them, carried them, then dumped them elsewhere.

Living in a lake town is beautiful, serene, soothing in the summer, but dangerous when it rains on frozen ground.

Teaspoons at a time and pooling on the floor, water still trickles in through the basement stone. As rain still fell and filled the world's dips and crags with water's perfect smoothness Sunday, I listened to the trickling, dripping trip it made through my house's invisible cracks.

Mother Nature doesn't mind her outbursts. The trouble is us little people with our staffs jammed in the mud yelling at the night sky and insisting on impossible, fleeting things. Dogs know better. Like the red-tailed hawk dragging its shadow across reemerging stones and trampled leaves today, the dogs meet complications and circle until prospects are better. Maybe the hurdles diminish with distance, and they play forgetfully in the breeze.

I must have missed that nice ascent into adulthood. I don't think I arrived with all the right lessons and I am sure that somewhere in my past is the girl who could have been me, yanking hysterically at her shoelace sucked into the bottom of an escalator.

I didn't see the sign that said, lessons on growing up and coping, this door.

I watch Hershey circling to find her ball on snowy ground with deceiving ruts in the snow that seize bright orange or blue toys and hide them in greedy fingers. She lopes around, nose to the ground, making a wide arc, back and forth and back and forth in shrinking swings like she's drawing a bull's eye. Diminishing the edges of her search at every pass, she eventually is left with just a little patch of ground to sniff. Just her and her ball. No one taught her to do this. I do not think she knows what to do, but she is able to move through her day successfully because she has matured. I missed. I never sat in on lessons to cope. If something bothers me, I will begin worrying about it at least a month ahead of time. Jerry is going on vacation in July (I am not going. Again, can't cope) and I have already stoked the seething, angry stress inside.

Feeling as though I had swallowed sour milk Saturday, my stomach cramped, but not before a little headache knocked on my temples demanding aspirin. Minutes later I realize that the white little devil of a pill is upsetting my stomach. Later, when nothing soothes the frothing cramps inside, I catch a chill. Then I am hot. Hours later I finally feel better. For the last week my stomach has been sour. Saturday night as I trudged through a stubborn bar crowd I felt the knots winding together in my guts and tightening.

Looking out the window Sunday night at dusk I saw rain braiding together small puddles in the parking lot. Soon the water and wind swallowed riverbanks and low surfaces as cars veered sideways in a hydroplane. Just a day earlier the 50-degree warmth melted most of what was left of snow that sealed the earth beneath winter since December. Twisted and unnatural shapes emerged that would form branches and limbs once the frozen ground plucked its bony cold fingers from the tips of trees.

But cold came again to seal up any softness that could soak in the rain.

Water wandered through backyards and entered basements and cars. It closed roads and carried chunks of blacktop away. Living in a river town became a trap as I drove home Sunday at nearly 2 AM. Dark black surfaces stretched ahead and rain blurred my view. Thank God J. drove behind me. The force of striking deep water ripped the steering wheel from my fingers and yanked the Bronco out of my control. Where was the guard rail, and how had I been so stupid?

I was stalled in the middle of a main street. Hopping out and walking back to J. I said, I'll let it sit for a minute, then try to start it again.

A few minutes later the engine caught and I went home. I stalled once, but I made it, with reassuring headlights following in case I needed a ride. Thank you.

Now, If I could just puke up some of the stress, I would be fine.

Working briefly with Lily and Hershey and their training commands, I realized I was too bent to handle it. Every little thing made me scream.

Jerry goes to bed and I had hoped he would just say goodnight. Just say something soothing and normal and affectionate. I wander to the door and ask, aren't you going to say goodnight?

Well, I was, he said. With an edge he tells me, goodnight, and the door closes before I can go in.

Opening the door and unzipping that last piece of normal I was wearing, I break into little mindless pieces of stress and I have a meltdown. Jerry tells me that tonight was one of his hardest with me. My mood is impossible and I just can't manage the stress.

The shitty smell of 79-cent cologne clings to my pocket. In a sad stupid and failed attempt to convince Lily to stay put while I work with Hershey, I placed mouthwash into a small squirt bottle, giving her a spritz when she disobeyed. The problem was how I got there.

I tried to buy a small spray bottle and the best I could find was a barf green Masculine Scent in the discount bin in the men's section at the pharmacy.

I thought that I could just dump it out and trade the perfumed stuff for mouth wash. Nope.

Nothing could suck the smell out of the plastic.

You gotta throw it out, Jerry told me. Seconds later it hit the trash. Unfortunately, awful smells die hard. The weird scent lingers in everything it touched, including my flannel shirt pocket.

It's a sticky stink like powder, flowers, melting sugar, and sleaze.

Today the snow's tightly knitted grasp eased across the frozen ground. Stones, leaves, and patches of soil poked through. Stray dog toys and hard rubber balls that we lost in the woods this winter stuck out like neon buttons on the mud.

Rummaging through my imagination like I can't find the lip gloss, I search for a memory. Between my fingers stuck deep inside a dark place I feel pockets of warmth, sharp hooks, stains, blunt and shapeless things, specks of ice, but nothing that I want.

I am looking for myself. I was little and our dog Gypsy stood taller than me. I wrapped my arms around her neck and smiled. We were in the back yard. We were not allowed in front where the traffic could leap off the street and kill us. My hair was bouncy after the curlers came out. Straight, flat bangs like a pasty sheet stuck to my forehead. A little girl in her bathrobe with her dog and fake curls. Except, like other little girls that can wash off the eyeshadow and comb out their hair, I really wished I was someone else, or at least not me.

Pulling up my socks one day and tying my bright yellow Keds, I saw my knobby knees. I saw my stupid bangs and grabbed my lunch as I ran outside. I was late for the bus. There were a bunch of other kids standing around in clothes I envied. If I had nicer clothes, I would feel better. If I had long, heavy curls like my neighbor, I would be happy. If I could just stay home and sleep in the sun with the dog, I would be so happy.

Running through the woods with Lily and Hershey I stagger along uneven paths through the snow that has in some places softened, and in other places remained firm where my repeated footsteps have packed it down.

I am a big girl now and the fury tingles in my fingers and shoots a hot spark of anxiety across my chest. I want to break things, just for relief.

I remember sitting in the cafeteria as a kid. Big trouble. We were not allowed to talk, even with our eyes, the teacher warned. The lunch ladies with pointed boobs and big bellies waddled around the room on stick legs. Their shirts were stained and they held plastic knives to help us cut our warmed up patties and burger buns that landed on our trays as we went through a fluorescent line and ladies with plastic bubble hair and sanitary gloves dished up food. We were not allowed to talk with our eyes or handle plastic knives.

A few years later lunch lady So N So had won the lottery, according to rumor. I remember thinking that it must be reassuring to have lots of money. Cash. I could stop dragging myself from bed to get to school where I wished everyone would stop looking at me, stop trying to talk to me, and just leave me alone.

Walking into work this week someone asked, how are the dogs? I just wanted to hide and close a door where I would no longer hear women in the next room complaining: there is dried mustard on the counter in the kitchen. Can you believe that? And there are paper towels right there…

A few days later the pasty white Formica was perfectly clean. Above it was a note. See the nice clean counters! Let's try to keep them this way. No mustard!

Well, something like that.

It's the cabinet graffiti that pops up every time someone is distracted enough from their life to rant about mustard. Jesus. Shut up. And please, do not talk to me.

I really think that I have once again become cranky enough that if people are decent, I believe it's a mask. Thank God for Lily.

My friend Ed H. died this morning, around the time I woke up with a head full of pressure and mucus. He does not know he has died. He fell in December and the injuries and coma finally took him away.

I have not seen a sunrise in a long time. The first early rays cross the sky while I sleep, briefly waking to close the blinds. I have not seen nature's beautiful orange liquid spill across the hills, filling the day with morning. I sleep.

I am awake when the world dreams and dozes. I m awake while covers keep husbands and wives snug and happy. I read. I sip my wine. I watch the clock and check the windows for pale signs of dawn. Soon the blackness changes and charcoal replaces a sky awash with stars. Soon that fades too and enough of the distant day's sun illuminates the trees. I hope to slip beneath a blanket before their limbs are clear and the day begins.

I have not seen a sunrise in a long time.

A friend sent me a video with two skeletons running toward each other. They are on a beach and the light is high. They cast short shadows. Tall, misty waves crash and foam onto a rippling surface that passes stolen sunlight across its crests.

I see through them as they run. Their shadows are wisps and lines of something incomplete. Closer, their arms almost touch.

They collide. Two skulls drop last as the bones shatter and fall away.

Who were they?

A stone in the distance changes shape as the sea around it covers its sides, then recedes.

Were they in love? Were they children playing? Do we keep seeking the things we want after we die and the stuff of our existence fades?