Is the same. I get shocked when I touch anything metal because the air is dry and the mobile home is carpeted in reddish-brown polyester, the sofa is covered in dark brown polyester, the cat sleeps in light brown polyester, and the dog sleeps in polyester the same color as the sofa’s polyester.

Even the zucchini shocked me today. (Because I had to walk on polyester carpet to get to it, and it was resting on aluminum foil.)

I wear keys around my neck. Several. I wear them because the homeowner doesn’t have copies of any. I learned on youtube that if I touch a metal thing with a key first, any electrons stuck to my body will flow through the metal and away, preventing or minimizing the shock. Wearing the keys has been helping.

It’s spring and the winds are intense. My hair is always in a up do, but there’s no hairclip or hair tie keeping it up. Only nature. The sunlight is solid and the dirt is real. I pick my nose every day and am shocked by how clean the boogers are. My nose is creating more boogers than it does at home ─ it has to ─ as protection ─ but I don’t understand why they are so clean. Maybe because I pick my nose too often. If I let them sit there and develop longer, they’d turn brown, like the polyester in the house. And I wouldn’t be shocked.

My skin is dry, my eyes are red, my hair is limp, and my hands have aged ten years. They were already the oldest looking part of me. Despite how exhausted my body looks, I feel attractive and interesting because there are dogs everywhere and dogs love humans. I watered the grounds today in my undies and a mid-riff and the Rottweiler couldn’t stay away from my crotch. Understandable. She’s a dog. Extra understandable because I’m on my period.

I’m not sure what she learned exactly, but she stayed very close, her nose in my butt almost the whole time, and that’s really all the attention I need these days.

I woke up to an instagram message from Jason. He sent me a post featuring Switzerland and shared his appreciation that we went there. It was sent in the wee hours of the morning. I assumed he was high and alone when he had sent it, and was reminiscing. It’s been 5 months since I’ve heard from him. Not that were talking regularly before that. He didn’t respond to my month belated birthday wish or a youtube video I thought he’d enjoy. And that’s alright. I’ve been working for some time on forgetting him and have been doing well.

Maybe he sensed that. Today was the most we’ve communicated in years. It was entertaining and sweet, even if it was likely drug induced. He talked about being surrounded by idiots, he shared gratitude for what he learned in our relationship, and he offered his availability if I ever need a “deep dicking” again, because I “deserve and desire it.”

He never spoke like that when we were together. He was always such a gentleman.

The soil here is clay. It crumbles by the handfuls when I try to work with it. It needs to be wet. I turn on the hose and all the life appears: the birds drink from the puddles, bees congregate where the hoses leak, Lucy comes to sneak in sips even though she has bowls of water scattered around the property.

She’s sleeping now. Twitching. Probably dreaming that I won’t come home today or that her owner will return home. Or dreaming of rats. She’s great at catching them.

It’s special watching a dog dream. I feel like they don’t get to it often because they are always on alert, asleep with one eye open so to speak. Always ready to protect. Or escape. There’s no true rest for animals, even the domesticated ones.

Jason made so many sexual innuendoes during our instagram chat reunion that I ended the conversation horny. I masturbated while thinking about him, something I never thought I would do again.

He made me remember how sex felt with him. It’s what kept me going for so long. If you’re going to date crazy, they better fuck crazy, and he did. His dick was obsessed with me. It’s unfortunate that my memory defaults to all the bad times with him. I would remember him as my greatest sex partner otherwise. Right now, he’s the worst of my boyfriends. The only bad one, really.

I have fantasized about him finding me dead, about Ross punching him, about posting his spare key (that I still have?) to a telephone pole with his address and a sign that says “I’m out of town. Come in and search for drugs. I have them.”

A part of me wants the worst for him, and for what? For loving me, pushing me to my limits, and breaking my heart? What I went through with him was in no way unique. What I went through with him was my choice. We struggled, we learned, and still I choose to experience the past through a filter of negativity.

He was always much better at remembering the positive.

I sat on the porch last week at 5am to watch the meteor shower. I don’t like the stars here. There are too many. The sky is static-y. My eyes can’t focus. I saw two meteors (one dim one, one bright one), and that was enough. I went back to bed.

I told Ross about not liking the stars and he said “Don’t tell a star lover that!”

He suggested I look at them a different way. “Try thinking about the small, dim ones as being far away and the bright ones as being close. That way you’ll start to see depth and it won’t look like a static-y mess. That will give you focus.”

I haven’t done that yet but his words have stuck with me. He doesn’t force perspective shifts down my throat the way Jason did. Ross doesn’t hurt me when he changes me.

He wets the clay first so it doesn’t crumble.