justwrite 16 february

but when I got outside finally bundled and trundled and long-slept the wind was so cold tearing tears from my eyes later the glare too but in the early early world just the wind slicing while feet go slowly show no progress best their own forward the best efforts they make taking no cakes and making me late to the bus pulling away and I wait but too late and the next one is wrong and the next maybe right but I let it go by waiting for a better bus to come but of course it doesn’t and I should have I ought to have but no matter I wait and finally it is too late to wait longer I walk down toward the otherway street planning to have a plan and attended again by the field-crossing german Shepard a young one a lean lady pacing along beside me across the steppe which might be a courtyard and hard to tell why but moving along is better and here she is again as I head elsewhere purposefully passing the cabs I will not pay for this mistake this is one I’ll carry myself and shake my own head at and when we get to the next corner I see it’s –15 and this is a little too much to consider while the sky is still dark so I cross and floss my steps through an icy expanse the glazed waves raised off the sidewalk never even in the best of times and in this cold the lines are hard to read and harder to step between but I do not fall and do not think about it my friend loops along the sidewalk keeping an eye on me and I do my best not to worry her with my unsteadiness I imagine others passing by imagine that she is my own dog and we are out together on a purposeful morning walk and so we are but so she is not and she investigates nearby stretches as I push forward on the sidewalk and as we pass another bus stop crowd of three morning waiters she darts ahead too proud to be owned even in a supposing sort of way but past these unnoticing standers she is beside me again and we are looking for the best way to cross the frozen mud in front of the alpha club and as neither of us are too impressed by any sort of alpha anything at this point in the morning we don’t even look in the door to see who might be looking out as is the usual tendency in front of a place like this and off she goes and now I lead and she checks me we stray we stay and finally I am at my door she has lagged and when I glance back I nod and she imagines she can make me understand what she means