Today's writing

I wake before sunrise. I don’t know where I am.

There’s a narrow bed, a scratchy blanket, a cold room. Where is my comforter? Where is Oliver? He always sleeps down by my legs, curling along the calves, a warm body pinning down the blanket, connecting me to everything that is real even as I dream.

I grasp through darkness to find something familiar: material that was once plush and is now well-loved. It is the stitched leg of a teddy bear. It is the Winnie the Pooh doll that I’ve had since I was six months old. When I was a kid I dropped the damn thing in the humidifier and went apeshit. Winnie!

“Bloated like a corpse,” I hear my mother tell my father as she spun Winnie through the dryer yet again. I bawled until she explained the meaning of hyperbole, then punished me for eavesdropping.

Now I’m holding Winnie, bringing his body close. He is battered by time and tenderness. He is my touchstone. He means home.

I flip on the light and – oh.