I haven’t watered the balcony garden in over a week. There are things that need to be done, they just keep happening, but other things must fall by the wayside in order for the appearance of forward motion to continue.

I’m glad it’s rainy season, and I hope my plants are surviving the combination of hot days and sometimes drizzling, sometimes dumping rain, but I can’t bring myself to open the sliding glass door in my bedroom, which leads outside to the balcony, which was the very reason I wanted this apartment to begin with.

I can’t decide if it would be better that everything—every plant whimsically chosen and carefully fussed over—had unceremoniously died, or if they were living on, perfectly fine without me and my occasional intervention. In lieu of answering that question, I stare out the window at the buckets and watering cans which are full to overflowing, begging for purpose.

I ate a slice of bread for breakfast today, because the loaf was out, there was one piece left, and nothing else occurred to me. There is plenty of stuff in the fridge to make other things—things I have written on a little note to remind myself that there are dishes to be made from ingredients I have bought, but the note keeps getting hidden beneath other things on the counter, and I forget it’s there—but instead I stare at the slice of bread in its carefully-clipped-closed package, and I fear for its loneliness at either being the only one of its kind left in the world, or being discarded as if it didn’t matter.

On Saturday or Sunday (I can’t recall which), I made cream of wheat for a late breakfast, sprinkled it with my favorite maple sugar, and drizzled it with cream left in the fridge from something else which hasn’t been made. Whenever I make cream of wheat, I can’t recall if the bland, hot cereal was actually a favorite from my childhood, or if I’ve reverse engineered my brain to believe so. Either way, it is comfort food now.

Or: it should be.

Instead, I push my spoon delicately around the bowl, watching the clumps and grains of dehydrated maple syrup blend into the very slightly upscale gruel, careful not to stir the mixture so much that it loses its loops and swirls, but rehydrating the sugar as I do so, and making it appear as if it was maple syrup that was added in the first place.

I eat slowly, trying to enjoy the familiar flavor & texture & possibly manufactured nostalgia, careful once again not to disturb the creamy colored cereal or the sugary brown patterns which have formed in the plain bowl I chose, while also trying not to spoil the appearance of the dots and wisps of cream floating on the surface, all the while slowly eroding the structure and the confidence of not only breakfast, but of life as a whole.

Today, though, there was bread and butter, also eaten slowly. I try to make myself believe that my intent is to savor the soft bread or the flavor of the gently salted butter—perhaps the usually pleasant chewy texture of the bread itself—but I’ve really gone to another place in my brain, one that I can’t even recall when I snap back to the present and realize that I still haven’t finished eating a single slice of bread, and wondering how long I’ve been standing over the sink, lost in missing thoughts.

I wonder if it will rain again today, blanketing my garden with the bare minimum it needs for life, and further delaying the how-long and the what-if of opening the sliding glass door, then opening the slightly crooked screen, stepping past the vessels of water, and raising my eyes to see what has become of something that I love so dearly.

Or: was it loved?