In the summer, she lies sprawled, legs stretched out in the patch of light. In the winter, tucked up like a hen. Totem, watcher, I brush your hair from my notebook.
I wrote, I am ill. The cure: the strength to write, I am ill. And those words on the page, surviving me and surviving my illness. Survival: they have left me behind. But then: I wrote them, I formed them. The words, I am ill.
Cured in the space of the page. Cured as one page filled, and then another, cat hairs brushed away. But no page as perfect as the first. No sentence as perfect as those first words: I am ill.