Back for the weekend from the group home/school/training center in Albi, his initial response to my “so, how was it?” is typical teenager. “Cool,” he says. He’s in a hurry to see his local buddies. The dam breaks late in the evening. A barrage of words swells down on me. Stories. Questions. Funny moments caused by his accent. More questions about administrative delays and how they may play havoc with “the best laid plans of mice and men”.

In the sky: a high moon on the wane. In my living space: half-packed for a stay in the country of anywhere between three and fifteen days. Clothes, books, notes, lists of emergency contacts, should the sick one need medical assistance.

The writing isn’t easy to sustain amid the phone calls, people at my door  or window, and people in my house.  The writing makes me feel like a cat attempting to catch a reflection on a window pane. Which, of course, is better than feeling like a cat stuck inside a closed dumpster.

Floating by: Bits of rhyme, bits of limerick, in French and English.

Last night, in the midst of his talk about school, rules, and a boy at the home whose family won’t speak to him anymore since he shot his own brother, a memory crops up. He says:  “In Libya,even four-year old children have knives and guns. They shot at us because we are black. Thanks to God, they missed me.  They steal everything they find. Libya is not a happy place.”

Bits of rhyme, bits of limerick. Among the books in my pack-out list: Françoise Morvan’s La douce vie des fées des eaux. I’ll have to buy the companion volume Vie et moeurs des lutins bretons.