in my new room, my desk faces the window. in my new room, the window faces the street. instead of a dim alley with a giant tree and the neighbor's shuttered windows, i have the edges of branches and the flat faces of the rowhomes across the street. one of the houses has a flag strung between two windows, curled on itself from the wind.

i feel as though i could balance on the windowsill, the cracked soles of my feet rocking on the old, old, wood, hands braced on either side. i could bend my knees, reach down like my window was a starting block and the wide air a pool, and launch myself across the street - porch, sidewalk, coming, going, sidewalk, porch - over the phone lines but under the birds. could catch on the flag without hitting the brick, hang for a moment, and let myself fall to concrete without a scratch. not fly; just reach. the world feels that close.

my new room is bigger, with better light during the day. movement is good, i think, change necessary. and despite a crippling rage the other morning, i think i'm getting better. i need to believe i'm getting better, that this thick miasma will pass; otherwise i suffocate under the fear that i may never be happy. (what if it isn't philadelphia i hate? what if i leave drexel but never love school again? what if i will always be afraid of strangers? what if i will always have days when i wake up paralyzed with the need to destroy something? what if i will always weep, suddenly, without knowing why? what if one day, the sunlight streaks across an iris in may and it doesn't make me smile? what then? what then?) the melodrama aches, but i can't put it away.