Late February, 2009. Manchester, NH.

I wake up to the thick smell of sandalwood, my throat dry. The radiator has turned itself off, but I'm sweating and the sheets are tangled around my legs. The crackling smell of incense is strong, like an alarm, and I'm up before I think about what I'm doing.

I haven't seen her for weeks, not through all the moving and unpacking, and now she shows up. Maybe I'm doing something wrong, but I get the even worse feeling that this is because I'm doing something right and don't know what it is.

Sleepwalking, jamming my feet into shoes and shrugging on a coat over my T-shirt, I know she's going to walk out from behind me or around a corner when I'm not looking. I feel like a kid in a horror movie, eyes squinched shut behind my fingers. Metaphorically speaking, at least.

And then my foot crushes something like a fragile sheet of paper and I understand that I didn't wake up because she's about to arrive. I woke up because she's just left. A half-dozen oak leaves, dry from autumn, tugging at the carpet in the faint breeze from the window. Her calling-cards, all of them, and I turn on the light to see what I know will be there, the crabbed black writing smudged onto each one.

I dig a pen out of my pants and start transcribing as best I can onto a clean sheet of lined paper, without even translating. There's no use keeping them, I've learned that much -- they crumble away within a day or two, and no photo album or envelope does much good. The ink is fresh on my fingers, like ashes mixed in juice, and I'm sweating fingerprints onto the pages and I don't mind because it's something, something raw to figure out and put together and eventually comprehend. She'll be watching from wherever she is, her pupils dilated and blind, and I feel my mouth take on the edges of her horrid comprehending grin. The insides of my shoes are sticky, and my skin feels dirty from bed, and I'll be up until morning, but I don't mind. I don't mind.

The first thing about signs -- they wait for you, not the other way around.

"Return to thy sober senses and call thyself back; and when thou hast roused thyself from sleep and hast perceived that they were only dreams which troubled thee, now in thy waking hours look at these things about thee as thou didst look at those others in thy dreams."

-- Marcus Aurelius, Meditations.