"With Eyes That Looked Like Ice on Fire, the Human Heart a Captive in the Snow..."

All of a sudden, I am very very sad.

If I wasn't on a diet and a sleeping schedule, I would lock myself in my room with a comfort book and a handful of mint cups and tortilla chips. But of course I can't lock my door, either, because Waen broke the lock.

I hate change.

I don't like it when people change, or when people go away, or when things change. I miss my friends.

Our dog is old now. I didn't even realise it. He has arthritis and can't run as fast as he used to. He was my Christmas gift about seven years ago; someone found him on the street and left him with my veterinarian aunt, who gave him to me because what I wanted most in the world was either a golden retriever or a border collie, and he's a mix of both. And now he's old. He'll die before I'm gone, I think. Before I go to college. I think about that a lot.

Things outside of my protected little world are changing, too. I won't be able to not notice things anymore. Bush has ruined a lot of things, and now everything's changed. And I can't be innocent and make it through everything, and anyway everyone's trying to stop my being innocent. I won't be able to get away with it soon. I can't not know about things, even things I don't want to know about. I have to do my schoolwork now as though something were going to come out of it, because college is coming. I'm going to have to get a job. I can't stay the way I am.

And I wish people didn't change. Our pastor of thirty years is moving away. We'll have someone else. Someone else who won't know to whisper the acolyte instructions to me during the service.

My friends are changing. Nothing is the way it was last year. I'm lonely for things that will stay the same, or people who will aways be there. Even Mum and Da' won't always be there. Da' is nearly sixty-four. A lot of people die at sixty-four.

Change scares me. Everything scares me. I don't want to have to leave my pretty fantasy world where I can write what I want because it's not my means of support.

But mostly I wish my friends didn't change. All I've learned about relationships this year is that they change people, and they make happy people not happy any longer. I want everyone in the world to be happy. I don't know how I can do it, but it's what I want to do.

And I'm sad. And I'm scared. But unfortunately, there's not a whole lot I can do about it.

"And Now You Know Why She Won't Break Down and Cry..."

When I went for my walk to-day, there was a funeral up at the church. I didn't realise it until I was there, and then I sort of stumbled around trying to stay out of everyone's way until they left.

Then I read The Chimneys of Green Knowe in the graveyard. I love that book, and I missed it.

I felt like it was my fault about fannore. All day. Because for so long I couldn't believe something wasn't going to go wrong, and kept thinking that, and then something did go wrong. So I felt like it was my fault. And then Mum sat me down and talked to me and told me it wasn't so.

I feel better now. But I want to be like tiamatschild. There's something about her that I wish I had right now.

I also want to live by the ocean, but that's just a fancy.

Someone contacted me and asked me for a poem of twenty-four lines or less for one of those imaginary international poetry contests, so I just tossed off this:

They said stars for you
Because when you reached out
Your fingers curled around the stars

When I wanted to give you something
I found a moon
Lying in the snow

And I thought your fingers would like that
Just as well
Because you liked to hold things

It was the first time I
Had ever wished anyone
The moon

It felt so good
When you smiled