Second snow day. Outside, the sky is a solid monochromatic, single layer of dirty white. Like old sheets that my dogs slept on too many times. Impure cotton. A grease filled brillo pad. An old bar of soap.

Indoors, I am nestled between two blankets, both wine red. The bottom is thick, quilted cotton. The top, down between slippery layers of polyester.

On the television, the Belcher family navigates Christmas and on the bed that is wedged in the corner, between two windows, my big dog, Figgis, stares out the window in response to the honking truck on television.

And me? I’m writing while my heart eases after re-reading an incredibly beautiful book. A book that explores family and secrets and devastation and separation. A book that splices time and transcends existence.

As I sit here, typing, I am filled with verbs, all of them active while I sit within the steeping confines of my existence. After thirty years of teaching, I am closing in on retirement. I am ready to pack up my career into my teacher bag and step out the doors and walk through the parking lot and get into my car, turn the key, and drive to my house.

I am ready to step closer toward the horizon and peek over the edge to see the stars on the other side. For the last week, I have been querying. And querying means elevated heart pressure and hoping which is active. Trust me. The coiling anxiety in my gut that slides up against the prismic emotions to spiral into hope. Those are all active.

Hope is active.

Hope is opening up the laptop one more time and reading and re-reading the query letters that feel so unreal but are real. That’s my book there. That’s my dream. It’s kind of important. Precious to me.

And then, there’s the switching between tabs. Query Tracker. Manuscript Wishlist. Google documents. Email. Google books. Click. Switch. Skim. Read.

Dream.

Write. Re-write. Plot. Plod.

What is next?

Verbs scaffold into verbs. Buy Mary Oliver’s book about writing poetry. Open that book but actually start reading Mary Oliver’s book of poetry Devotions because I love Mary Oliver. She is hope. She is legacy. She wrote about crossing the swamp which might be a literal description of fording one’s way across the swampy, gloopy mess of a watery landscape.

But I know that it also has to be figurative as she writes about bones and sinews and growth and triumph.

Verbs. All of them active.

I dream about selling my book. I dream about writing more. About sitting in the corner of my couch, tucked between two blankets. Or maybe, sitting on a foam pad in the woods, my butt being jabbed by the rock under the pad and my hands aching because I don’t write longhand that much anymore. But I keep receiving journals and I can’t let the pages stay blank. They need ink or graphite smeared across them. Even if those words are illegible because my handwriting is “piercing of the cornea.”

More verbs.

I pray. I try not to pray because constant, repetitive prayer about the same thing feels like I don’t trust God. But I do. I trust Him and have faith in Him. But I dream. And dream and dream and dream. I have been dreaming the same thing since I was a young teen and realized that writing was more than a pastime for me. That writing was my heartbeat and each word was another life-delivering pulsation through my body.

Verbs. All of them active. And even in my stasis, I am deep within the active bones of the universe. I will catalog and numerate each tiny bone.