Dirty

Shoveling away at the hole sinking in on itself,

I believe I piled away another heaping load twice my height and half my weight behind me.

This... digging, was a sort of way to assuage my lack of prospects in so many other holes. Holes were I found rocky surfaces that spanned long across the area of my circular zone. Spaces were my spade couldn't break through, until I had to abandon it all together entirely.

This... This was the prospects of longevity in my networking of "work." The availability of "jobs" as they might call it over a long ten year span.

Work where I was motivated to do so, but my body said no.

Work where I was able to get in, but couldn't stay because they said so.

One way, to the other. Tipping scales left and tipping scales to the right, I could see a myriad of doors I was trying no different than anyone else before me.

And in each attempt, sometimes I was well kept, and others... not so much.

Was this the easy fall from grace people spoke about?

Nah. Couldn't be. I hadn't fallen far enough, but I was dangerously close to the edge, a place where I had no foothold if I was very unlucky, but we weren't there yet.

And in all my nonsensical chattering, in my head, here, below the eaves of a house so beautiful I know I'd never see anything like it twice, I could tremble at the shoulders and hold my head in my hands knowing that this wasn't going to be much longer. And that I wouldn't know where I'd go next, but it wouldn't be easier. Not prettier... Not enough.

Because where stability is, it always gets pulled out from beneath you before you get just enough. Enough to finally be on the up trend. Enough to be stable. Almost like it's a mockery of the help you receive from others, like it should be just enough, but never is. Not when you're a hair away from standing on your own, no longer digging holes in your fields to find the water to grow. For growth to come in.