When I’m depressed and think my life to be like a dreadful desert wasteland I can only survive, I also think every thought I have to be like a subterranean world in “the dead of night,”

the kind of world I can go to in order to be by myself for a while, one where I can start over and learn to fall with paradox again, if resolving a contrary relationship is what I want,

and this thought in particular I’m imagining to be like an ancient, healing bath, a stone-encircled hot spring that’s pouring with phosphorescent water,

one where a white wolf of loving friendship enters the bubbling water beside me to lay down on top of me and lick my face

like a dog that’s been waiting all day for me to get home from work and be its slave, but won’t growl at me when I ask it to wait until I’m done taking care of myself.