Today, I went to Home Depot, and I bought some bags of dirt and some bags of rocks. I also bought some thirsty little plants in dirt and some unthirsty little plants in rocks, as well as a little tree that I soon need to put in a large pot. I then pulled all the weeds out of the bed that lines one side of the patio and covered the dirt with rocks. After two years of trying to get different types of plants to grow there, I have finally accepted the fact that even if cultivation of anything but clover or miscellaneous weeds is possible in that spot, it isn't possible for me. Rocks I can do. I then weeded my succulent bed, which is in a rather odd-shaped area on the patio that used to be a koi pond or something along those lines. Not a whole lot of planning has gone into the succulent bed. Basically, I buy things I like, and I then just pick a spot for them at random. So far, this has worked out okay for all the plants except the lithrops, which lacked the strength and stature to defend themselves against the crushing weed onslaught.

After that, I spent a whole lot of time hacking away at bamboo. A friend who visited not long after we moved into this house told me that lots of people really hate bamboo. At the time, I didn't understand—the plants added some nice color to the end of the patio, and they required virtually no care. What I didn't know is that bamboo wants to be everywhere, and when you only want it to be in one or two places, you have to battle stalks that grow like seven feet a day and have a bizarre root system that seems to run horizontally for a mile or so in every direction.

I was in fifth grade when I got chickenpox. I had a run-in with some poison ivy on a school field trip just a month or so later. Both were bad; I spent what seemed like half the year taking baking soda baths, trying to see through eyes that were swollen shut, and just generally feeling miserable and ugly. Even my mom told me a good ten years later that she had secretly feared my face would somehow stick like that, and I'd end up looking like Mr. Magoo with a bad sunburn for the rest of my life. I got away with three or four barely-noticeable scars instead. The only thing that truly stayed with me was a recurring fever-dream from the worst days of the first illness. I would lie in bed, with the socks on my hands held in place by tape—I ripped them off my hands while I slept if they weren't held in place by tape—and I would find myself inching as far away from the edge of the bed as I could get. Since the bed was in the corner of the room, I'd eventually end up at the spot where the two walls met.

And then, I'd open my eyes and find that the bed had stretched out; it had moved away from my corner while remaining part of it, but it had moved so far that I couldn't see the edge, and it had taken some of my breath with it. Everything had become a sterile white: the comforter, my pajamas, the space where the far walls used to be. And my corner felt smaller. Constricting. It was refuge that wasn't refuge, but I preferred it to the vast white bedland that I was pretty sure never stopped. I would lie as far as I could get from the edge of the bed, smashed against pillows that didn't have any cool spots left, and I'd curl up into a ball. Small, to match my corner.

I'm sure I'm not the only one who's had this fever dream, though I don't think I've talked to anyone about it, so I can't say for certain. Really, though, these sorts of things are rarely unique. My subconscious might come up with a bizarre sequence or two on occasion, but the symbolism is heavy-handed and sometimes embarrassingly Freudian. That might concern me more if I were a poet, but I'm not, so it doesn't bother me much. It certainly doesn't make the memory of the thing less vivid—especially when the thing returns to you, plays itself out again and again, is served up repeatedly by your cooking brain. Memories of things that really happened aren't always more powerful than memories of things that never happened, and that's why real life can remind you of something that's only real in your head.

Curling up never really works; everything looks about the same when you can see again. It's better, I think, to stay busy: to avoid getting lost in the looking when you can't seem to take anything in, to keep the smallness from swallowing you. You have to make a plan. Right now, mine involves going to Home Depot, buying some bags of dirt and some bags of rocks, coming home, and then sticking my hands in the ground. Despite thoughts of poison inspired by recalcitrant bamboo stalks, it's working a little, I think. Besides, if I keep pretending that I'm good at this, eventually, it will just be true.