Roomie bae, ex-roomie bae, autonomous bae, the new baes who’d been out the night I spazzed last month—whose house this was—plus others I vaguely knew and others I didn’t, all there when I showed.

We did an herb ceremony thing on the roof.

Standing in a circle at sundown and letting the dried-out sage or whatever get lifted aloft by the breeze.

Ex-roomie bae reminding us that New Year’s Eve was the end of the Gregorian year, but tonight, the end of the lunar.

Of the botanic/agricultural/floral.

Hibernation’s end.

Bloom Time.

No one explicitly opposed my presence, but I wasn’t taking any chances. I kept my distance.

Squadded up with T, ex-roomie bae’s boo, who had slight misgivings about being here also.

We alternated between the snack table in the kitchen and out on the stoop to smoke.

I was feeling shitty about the New Year’s Eve chapter I’d written, before my hospitalization, that had involved him.

Considered mentioning it, for a split second.

Before thinking Dude hell no, you’re trippin.

That incident had fucked him up for months.

He’d basically stopped going to that house I used to live in, where that New Year’s party had been, even though he still had homies there, just bc he couldn’t see those front steps without getting triggered, lowkey having an acid flashback.

Fuck dude, I said when he told me this, feeling so guilty.

But we got to talking cortisol regulation, trauma management, and the connection between the two.

T a therapist.

In training.

Seeing Medicaid patients who couldn’t afford full-on docs, getting his hours in.

“Oh no, they’re for sure connected,” he said when I proposed that maybe, just maybe, all the shame and self-hate and repression I felt about how everything had gone down with ex bae was tied to how crazy my bod had wilded out last year.

“You get real hot and sweaty? Then chills?”

“That’s exactly what was happening.”

“A hundred percent to do with cortisol levels. An inability to regulate them.”

He passed me his Bilbo Baggins–ass wooden piece that drew so well bc he cleaned it so well and regularly. I’d never once cleaned mine (unless you counted cashing tf out of it for resin hits, which you shouldn’t).

I drew, keeping that cherry going.

This block, 54th, four blocks west of the generally accepted gentrification line, was dark and quiet. Peaceful, so long as you were cool with the possibility of someone pulling up on you.

One of the gals who lived here had recently bought the house. This was the third instance I’d heard of people buying houses on the 5400 block.