The world is hurtling forward, while we sit like a wheelbarrow in the middle of the sidewalk, a project that was interrupted and now waits, disregarded by the guilty party, shamed by the passersby.

A bluebird was in the yard today.  I don't know what she was thinking.  Lately, the February sun shines with promise and the temperatures are up, but it's not nearly time for spring migration.  Whether she's a loitering left-behind from fall or an early bird, jumping the gun on getting south fast, I can only guess.  And whatever the reason for her presence is, I am grateful.  Her coat was drab and mothy, as if she were too harried to care much about her looks.  Still, the sky blue hem on her wings was unmistakeable against the wash of brown branches now free of snow.  She sat for a while on a small arm of our cherry tree.  Having become so accustomed to the twitchy flitting and restless antics of the juncos and chick-a-dees, I felt pleasantly refreshed and relaxed as I watched the bluebird.  It was a kind of meditation for me.  There she was, a blue dot in the tree, a living dot, a warm dot, surviving, without ostensible anxiety or worry.  Maybe there was no food nearby, but she would find some not far away.  Or she wouldn't maybe.  The conclusion would come to her.  And not the other way around. 
     Birds are an inspiration.

Back in second grade, Harvey and I made a list of the places we loved best.  At the top of mine was the library.  I couldn't imagine a better life than one that offered story time at all hours of the day.  His favorite spot was my dinner table.  He wasn't used to sit-down meals, and he said he liked that we always had edectible appetizers.  That's how it was written on the paper: "edectible," which was a hybrid of "edible" and "delectable" I think.  My mom kept the list when she found it in my backpack that night, and we still have it.  Fortunately, she doesn't know that eight years later, Harvey tried kissing me in the library.  Our teenage angst had dominated a rather uneventful Friday night and driven us through the lower level windows, cracking a pane of glass when the latch slipped and the window fell.  It made us nervous, and we regretted our rash decision, but I laughed and pressed into the gloom of the vacated basement.  Harvey followed me.  We ate cookies from the refrigerator and crawled into the children's nook.  I took off my shoes, and Harvey said the blue of my toenail polish matched my eyes.  The insinuation of his comment made me uncomfortable, so I turned away and stared at the wall.  He threw a pillow at my head and when I pulled it off he was inches from me.  I jumped up.  "Harvey."
"I thought you said nothing could go wrong in the library."
"What?" I said.
"You used to say that the library was a magic place that allowed only good things to happen."
"Harvey."
"You said it."  His eyes looked like full clouds just before a good rain.
"Have a cookie," I said, offering him the sleeve of Oreos.
That made him mad.  He got up and clambered back out the window.  I didn't want to follow him, so I waited and waited until I fell asleep on the cushions.  It was after midnight when Mom called.  In the car, she asked where Harvey was.  "At home, probably," I said. 
"Weren't you with him?"  She seemed amused.  "Don't get that boy into any more trouble.  He's got a tough enough life as it is."  What she meant was that he wasn't popular. 
"Everyone at school thinks he's hot," I said.  "You should see him without a shirt on."
"Ali."  She grimaced, and we didn't talk about it again.

When I decided to stay in Boston and search for jobs, I began the hunt with my crosshairs locked on big bloated publishing houses.  After a few quiet days, I broadened the scope to include smaller publishing houses.  It didn't take long before I was sleeplessly stalking every company, American or otherwise, that had hired an editor in the past two centuries, begging them to let me in for an interview and a bowl of soup.  Eventually, I surrendered and sent my application to a restaurant named Vlora that was looking for a hostess.  During the interview I could have guessed that the situation wouldn't work out.  Pop music rocketed out of the loud speakers, and blue lights rose up from the floor like beacons beckoning from Dante's icy canto.  "Do you have lots of clothes?" Aldo, the owner, asked me.  I nodded, but truthfully I was living out of a carry-on suitcase.  "You need to dress nice.  No blue jeans."  He frowned at my jeans.
        I returned the following day for training.  "Nice outfit," Aldo said, nodding approvingly.  I didn't tell him that I had bought the dress, tights, and flats after our interview the day before.  My training included directions on how to properly wipe menu covers and how to stand appropriately by the door.  (Standing etiquette discourages pocketed hands.)
        As soon as I was home, I sent Aldo an email that said I appreciated the generous offer to work at his prominent restaurant, but I didn't think it was a good fit for me.  "There are more important things than money," I told Hannah.
        "Obviously," she said.  "You had a job and you quit."

Blocking the door, stood a large man.  His stature was so huge that only tiny slivers of outside light could slip into the hut.  When he shuffled forward, I noticed that he wore a long trenchcoat which rippled against his sides like eel's flanks.  He made his way to a carved table, one that seemed to have materialized, and set down a sack.  Looking over his shoulder at me, he grinned.  "Everyone should be here soon.  Punctuality was never our strong suit."  He returned to his task of emptying the bag, but not before I caught a glimpse of his teeth.  They looked so rancid, I could almost smell them. 
        "Who?" I said.  "I'm sorry I barged in on your home.  I live nearby.  My parents, they live nearby.  I'm their daughter.  I didn't mean to barge in on your home.  I'm not supposed to be here.  I was just out for a walk."
      The man said nothing, only continued with his task.  I watched as odd tools emerged one by one--a hammer, a handsaw, a length of rope, a candlestick, a golf club, a tourniquet. 
     "What are those for?" I asked.  He looked at me and grinned again.  This time I could see all the way back into his mouth where a gold cap twinkled like a chalice tucked away in a hidden chamber.  He picked up the instruments and hung each of them on a separate peg along the wall by the door. 
       "First rate, aren't they?  Don't get too attached to one."  He was talking to me now.  "You'll have last pick."
        At that moment, noises of footsteps drifted in from outside.  Within the lifespan of a breath, the sounds were followed by their sources, and in walked a haggard crowd of cloaked figures.  They were chatting but softly.  As they filed past the display of hanging weapons, each plucked one of his/her choosing and carried it to a seat at the table.
         "All right," shouted the man who had appeared first.  He banged the butt of a machete on the tabletop.  "Order.  Order.  Committee Of The Unemployed, hear me.  We are in session.  Do not speak until you have spilled your own blood.  Ah yes, Thompson."  Everyone turned to look at Thompson who was raising his right hand.  His palm oozed a tail of blood which wriggled as it stretched down his wrist.  He held a knife in his left hand, and his teeth were clenched. 
          "What's the blonde doing here?" he asked, pointing a bloody finger in my direction.  All eyes turned on me.

          I woke up then and looked down at my legs.  They weren't bound or chained.  I ran all the way home and made it back for dinner.

With the intention of returning home before dark, I had left a note for my parents, relieving them of their obligation to cook me a wholesome and taxing meal.  I had with me a block of cheese, two bottles of home brew, bread slices, deli turkey, mustard, oranges, and sunflower seeds.  The snow would provide refrigeration for the beer and dairy.  Again, I didn’t plan on being gone longer than a few hours.  It was too cold to brave the night in a perforated shack. 
         At first, I was afraid that I wouldn’t find the place.  However, after heeling with the running creek for barely ten minutes, I stumbled across the hut.  It sat in the snow like a brown package that had fallen off a delivery truck.  The ceiling was lower than I remembered, and the whole structure looked too meager to be anything more useful than a stepping stone for some greater dwelling.  The walls were no better than cardboard.  I did, however, trust them to not collapse unexpectedly.  Inside, there was a cheerfully small amount of snow covering the dirt-hardened floor.  And maybe it was just my optimism, but the interior felt warm.
        The hut was without tables or chairs.  I cleared snow out of a corner until there was mostly hard ground visible and sat down.  I ate an orange.  I tossed the peelings outside.  The clouds had thickened and snow was coming down lightly. 
        When I awoke, I couldn’t move my legs.  They felt glued to the floor.  My first thought was that I was frost bitten.  I was oddly toasty, even though the sun was nowhere to be seen and the open doorway had allowed entrance to some wayfaring snow drifts.   It worried me that I felt warm, because I had been told that illusory heat was a sign of hypothermia.  I tried to reach my hand out to feel my legs, but my arms too were frozen stiff.  There was pain behind my knees and around my ankles.  Something was constricting my veins.  I looked down, squinting in the gloom.  My legs were tied.
          A voice snapped my attention to the doorway.  “Welcome.”

It doesn’t seem fair that Harvey is gone.  The disappearing act was claimed and patented by me.  I’m the known itinerant, passing through town like a curious and inevitably uninterested wind.  He stole my move.  At the very least he could have waited for me to leave first.  Without Harvey around, this time there won’t be anyone to watch me go.

            This morning I walked around the house in my underwear and moccasins.  It was cold, but for some reason the chill felt relieving like a long anticipated punishment finally arrived.  The snow outside the window glared brightly under the sun.  My eyes ached, even when they were closed.  Once I had my tea in front of me, I considered looking for jobs on Craigslist, but the Internet was fritzing and no matter what I tried, the problem couldn’t be circumvented.  I let my head slump onto the table.  Mousy thoughts nibbled at my mind, preventing me from falling asleep, until I awoke suddenly to a truckload of snow sliding off our corrugated roof.  Whoomp.  The noise shocked me like a mother's slap, and I jumped up, feeling as if I had been injected with motivation.  Within an hour I was on my way out the door, backpack bursting, heading toward the little hut in the woods.