There's got to be more than this boat I'm in.

The house has started acting weird again. Different than it's wintertime fits. More organic in a way. It's probably the warm. But old smells are being reanimated--the back hall reeks of puppy once more. The bathroom is seething and dripping and no amount of strangling can stop it or the tiny gnats that are driving me to distraction. The kitchen floor is shedding it's imitation linoleum squares like snakeskin.

And the upstairs is noisy when no one is home but me. Like the deck of a ship. No more of the cold patience of our January ghosts. But instead the hot militant sounds of flapping sails and wooden creaking and sailors running and all. And the house pitches in the wet winds and the trees slap themselves against its sides. And I go green and sickly and try to keep my pencils from rolling overboard.