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Witchy

This student should not be in my science class. Half the students who should be there, who lose credit by skipping, are twenty feet away in the day room, playing cards. It is not my job to rouse and pull them into the room only to note they are not present and to teach the students who want to learn and pass.

The interloper, who has a GED, asks me to explain why he is not in college. I decide that this question is reason enough to let him stay, though I shoo out most graduated students, as they only want to take computers away from my students. Who can doubt the seductive appeal of generic Frogger or silent science videos (the prison computers do not have speakers, though they do have headphone jacks)?

This could all be yours

We had not had hot water for days. Then the heat went. From my twice daily reminders, the property manager was aware we lived with such privation. If my neighbors also messaged her, I do not know, but I had done my due diligence of being so mildly pesky that she could ignore me.

The threat of having to boil water again for a bath was too much for Amber. I had been taking cold showers, trying to convince myself there was something spiritual about being an acetic and/or that I was bathing under waterfalls, as my ancestors surely did.

Amber resumed house hunting, an activity we had abandoned years ago--when we might have better bought a house, in retrospect.

Please don't die

Israel disrupts and infiltrates the supply chain, disseminating pagers imbued with an explosive, which they trigger to go off all at once. Some in Hezbollah--their target and enemy--are grievously wounded or killed. Bystanders, some children, face the same fate. On the internet, the predicable sorts do not mourn for the dead children, referring to them as larval terrorists. Zionists are unsubtle.

I struggle to fully express how little I want to discuss issues of geopolitical importance in what is an online diary. This is not the place, no matter my stance on apartheid and ethnic cleansing. (Opposed.) However, these are not atrocities I see only on this side of a screen. My niece, Ayannah, remains there with her boyfriend. She tells my mother she hears the sonic booms of Israel's bombing campaigns but has not seen any of the aftermath. She is a forty-minute drive from Bierut--one of Israel's primary targets--but it does not bother her.

Blood

I'm backing up when my drunken neighbor stumbles toward my car. I roll down the window anyway. He tries to shove money at me and tells me it is so we can have a stray cat wandering our property neutered. Amber and I have told him we will probably have this done for free at Amber's animal hospital once we catch it (but it tends to approach us to pet him and once followed me for seven minutes as I walked away, so it shouldn't be a trial). I realize that accepting the money is the only way to get him to let us leave. At this point, I figure out it is a fifty.

Spooky

I offer Amber the choice between a free community dinner in Red Hook, followed by our biweekly Queer Board Game Night, or going to the Witches Ball. Without apparent hesitation, they choose the Witches Ball, which I have never done, but have seen advertised for years. It espouses a ritual fire performance followed by a drag show, with cocktails and dancing interspersed. There is also the Night Market, whose wares I imagine but do not know. I had waited until the last hour before advance admission closed to ensure we were in the mood for it.

A minute after I bought the tickets, Amber says they are tired and don't necessarily want to go.

Suspicious

I return home from work wielding a bright bouquet of cheap flowers. I wanted the more authentic ones, not dyed candy colors, but they were wilted in the front of the grocery store--the more adult bouquets also contain lilies, which our kitten would eat until he needed a vet visit. I choose artificial petals over dead cats.

Ambers eyes open in joy, then narrow in suspicion. "Why are you giving me flowers?"