Cassandra sits in a rocking chair in a large, circular room. It has the slightly stale air of a room rarely visited. The sunlight filters down through the skylights; dust motes dance in the sunbeams. The shelves are lined with mementos, and fingerprints in the dust show which ones have been recently looked at: the wooden mask of a monkey, a perfume bottle, a puzzle box, shells and stones collected from the beach, an urn. There are books on the shelf, too: poetry, some prose, all thumbed at the edges, stains of red wine and coffee, marginalia. One book full of little scraps of paper that fly out from the pages and scatter across the floor when you open it. What was marked? It doesn't matter. Cassandra rocks in her chair and the creak on the wooden floor says what she is tired of saying, hates to say: Told you so, told you so, told you so.  

The moat the drawbridge the tower the turret the little holes where the archers peek out… you know, the usual castle features. You can embellish it up, make it a superfancy metaphor, where the moat is your tears and the turret is where you hide your fragile heart and the archers are, oh I don't know, those catty asides, sarcastic barbs, your explosions of wit and cruelty. High walls, one assumes, well defended and whatnot, not to be scaled by the cowardly. Also vines from years of neglect. 

Everybody wants a castle and by everybody I mean you. You wanted a castle, you built it, you carried in the cold smooth stones and fixed them into place; the fortress the buttress and you the mistress. Walking the ramparts, then. Surveying. Taking the measure. Games of strategy in the throne room and needlepoint by candlelight. Remembering all the stories you once knew.

Well that's all very fine but what now? You should probably have a conflict of some sort. You can't have a story without a conflict. You can't have a conflict until you lower the drawbridge. You had thought you wanted a wonky spell cast upon the walls: nobody ever goes in and nobody ever comes out, except that gets boring after a while. Perhaps a horse of the trojan variety or maybe some circus performers could come by. A bard, singing songs of other castles, everybody likes a little peek at the neighbors and if the wandering minstrel (wandering minstrel!) beds the queen at night well that just livens up the tapestry a little, doesn't it.

Of course there is a part of you that is frightened; not everybody comes out of every story alive. Digging your nails into the rough wooden underside of the banquet table to stay calm; the shadows of strangers against the walls turn into monsters by firelight and pebbles have been carelessly skipped across the moat as if it doesn't hold the history of a thousand sadnesses. It's still okay though; you wanted a story and now you are getting one. Quick, look or you might miss something. 

It is difficult to have deliberately chosen to be a certain way because it is easy and then wonder if perhaps you shouldn't have chosen a different way, or no way at all. To have chosen to stop tasting the foods that make you sick, and then wonder when standing at a table laden with meat whether you really really didn't like it or if you just decided at some point to stop wanting it. 

When it was winter it was winter forever, it had always been winter and it would always be winter. The bleakness of it, the relentless overcast, the ugliness of yellow snow, black ice, gray icicles dripping from the eaves and in doorways. And yet you chose this, and there were small pleasures: snow piled on the heads of statues, the swoopmarks of mittens on car hoods, and the cozy sweet warmth of indoors, watching snowfall through a window, being safe. It was never your favorite season but it had some nice bits. And it was going to be winter forever, whether you liked it or not.

And then suddenly spring, rebirth, awakenings. The shock of buds unfurling, light warm rains that misted your hair, fluffy bunnies and chicks and a near-cloying sweetness that you, with your memory of tears frozen in your eyelashes and one foot still in the snowpile of winter, viewed with something between wonder and suspicion. But it was never going to be summer, never again, never, and sometimes at night the empty cold of winter swirled in, a dust cloud of snow, and things too early planted died in the frost.

And now here is summer, predicted for you for years against your brave smile and your insistence that winter was forever, and part of you still doubts, still wearing winter boots that are worn at the heels and scraped at the toes, watching the girls in their summer dresses parade by and it's very nice for them but you have learned to trust the wardrobe of winter too well to let go of it too soon, and yet you find yourself thinking of changing over your clothes, putting sweaters into cedar and mothballs, you find yourself thawing out just a bit more every day, opening the curtains to let in actual light that shines sometimes as long as all day. Here is a summer you never thought would come: this is a good thing.

And yet your winter heart. And yet you scan the horizon for clouds, find them and stare at them with… what? A child's rage at the unfairness of it: can't I even just for five minutes have an unbroken blue sky, a hot trickle of sweat down my back, a pink in my cheeks that isn't chapping and burst blood vessels? Child, it has been winter for half your life. Give things a little time. Go buy some new shoes, for summer's sake.

It's afternoon and I cannot concentrate, lost in a time loop of every loss ever, a sadness that feels real but is more likely exhaustion from staying out late so I decide to take a nap. But the dog upstairs is barking, barking, barking, barking, howling, and after about twenty minutes a neighbor opens her door and shouts SILENCE! The word reverberates in the hall, louder than the dog's bark, I can almost feel the vibration against the wall, which is against the head of my bed, which is the end of nap time, and I get up, and make coffee against the sleepiness that I have failed to kill naturally, and I feel like I've been tired forever but of course that is not true, it just feels true.

And the dog upstairs is barking again now after about ten minutes of silence, barking and howling, and twenty minutes of barking and howling pass and I've finished my coffee and started to work and the neighbor opens her door and shouts SILENCE and I think the whole day will be loops like this. I remind myself that every moment is really just a moment, just standing there alone, disconnected by time and space from other moments, even if it looks the same; I also remind myself that those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it, and I have to think about that, the same as I do every time this thought loops through my brain: the truth of now and the truth of history. I don't even have time to think about the future.

And in the time it has taken me to forget to work, lost in pondering, the dog upstairs is barking again, barking and barking and howling, how can they leave him alone all day, and the neighbor shouts again, and I consider posting a sign in the building vestibule pointing out that the dog does not probably understand the language of humans, or in any case, doesn't understand or remember that silence now means silence forever. I often pretend to not understand the language of humans as well, although I am terrible about forgetting or pretending to forget, because I always remember.

Of course in addition to forgetting that someone told him to stop barking, he also forgets that his owner is coming home ever, which is why after a brief pause he is barking again, barking at the wind, howling at his fear of being alone forever, barking and howling. I had an interesting conversation with his owner, who swears it is not her dog who cries all day, not her dog being shouted at, but one of the other dogs in the building. And to be fair when this one gets really frantic he can set them all off; if for example you come home late and drop your keys in the hallway the whole building erupts in terror and defensive maneuvers. But right now it's just this one dog, barking and howling at his absolute abandonment, because he doesn't remember how this morning he was loved and I think that maybe living in the moment has greater disadvantages than living with a brain full of memory loops, and the neighbor opens her door and shouts SILENCE and I get my earplugs out and go back to work.