begun; undone

It's as if I have been holding my breath for nearly two years in the middle of a crowded, windowless room with fluorescent lights at one end and dim bulbs at the other.

And the crowd is discussing swimming techniques, since they happen to be Olympic swimmers and know of nothing else but laps. I swim like a stone and reach for a brick.

But where are the windows? Oh yes. That's right.

I can hold my breath well, though. So perhaps I will survive the drowning.

Or so my pattern of thought has been month after month after...

I'm prepared for the flood. I receive the drought. How is one to survive the cracked earth?