The New Yorker is on my bed, invitingly open to a vintage close-up of Wonder Woman. It's cold outside. The chill is persistent enough to crawl through the walls and clever enough to slip inside whenever someone opens a door. My tea pays no mind, brewing at its leisure. I am patient with its pace, wrapping my bare feet in a blanket as I wait. The blanket is white with a small coffee stain in the corner, so I tuck that corner out of sight. Out of mind. Today is not a day for worries about laundry, work, stains, or even less permanent things.
Dawn is breaking and the shatter of it is splintering the sky into shards of broken color. The light falls on the stack of mail beside me. The letters are full of loving, overflowing with sticky webs connecting me to my world. If Charlotte were here, I wonder, what words would she weave to save me? Would she try? Could she succeed where I failed? Today is a day for mind-wanderings such as these, a time for fable-borne questionings. It's cold outside, but my pen doesn't falter for even a moment as I write.
Every note I read, every stroke of applied ink to paper, wraps me in a tight cocoon of webbing. I am by the grace of the strands who refuse to let me go. Eventually, I will fly free and send strands of connection to others who need warmth on cold, dark days-to those who dream of all manner of saviors, even the eight-legged kind.
But that is not a worry for today. Today, I am as my tea-evolving at my own pace, steeping in warmth, content in the truth that someone out there is waiting patiently for me.
It is one remarkable day, and with that reminder-I am saved.
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What would Charlotte write for you?
