Today I thought a rejection letter wasn't one. I read it as "Although you were amongst the finalists" and didn't see the "not." I was all ready to put it in my "finalists" file and then I spotted the pesky not. Not amongst the finalists.

But I was amongst the finalists for a couple of other good things. I also had the most amazing exchange with a collegiate poetry lover who did a class presentation on my poem. The best part was that she gave out props -- water guns and bitter chocolate -- to the class. To that fine person: you made my month. She didn't even know that I could freebase bitter cocoa and like it: I'm that fanatical about chocolate. I loved the shiatsu practitioner who advised me "more chocolate -- bitter food is good for your heart." Bitter food and play are good for every heart.

Now that I am getting ready to move, I find out that the guy across the street -- the one who is always sitting on his porch when I am sitting on my porch -- is a writer. I thought he must be one, because people who hang out on porches alone are almost always artists of some kind. He properly introducted himself last week but our porches had been dialoguing. The neighborhood is great now that I am moving. There is a manly man across the street who mows his lawn with a push mower and whose groupie dog follows him everywhere. I caught him talking to a squirrel. The little girl upstairs broke my hammock because she is too light to float, with no body fat at all. The lilacs bloomed for three weeks with an aggressive fragrance and then died. I don't see these things in the winter, when I am cooped up and sick. I don't see the quiet baby who sits in the grass like a Buddha, or the skateboarders that my dog used to hate so much. I am thinking the guy on the porch writes slipstream, and the manly man lets birds land on his shoulders. I will catch him one day, outfitted in finches.