Telling snapshot-in-words of my desk this afternoon: aloe plant, mug of Gypsy Cold Care tea, ibuprofen, empty peanut butter jar.

In more cheerful news, my current apartment has two separate, perfect writing nooks. I've made them in the dormers at each end of the apartment, one in the living room and one in the bedroom. Right now I'm in the living room. My detritus-ridden desk looks out the windows onto a maple tree just beginning to turn. There's a cold breeze coming in, wet with rain.

At the other end, in the bedroom, I've set up my sewing table (now a table, converted from an early-20th-century sewing machine, found at a yardsale), upon which rests a borrowed Smith-Corona typewriter. Pulled up to the table is the diminutive, upholstered chair that sat in my grandmother's bedroom when she was alive. Later, that is where I'll sit to revise poems.

I'm dependent on, and influenced by, my physical space. Annie Dillard wrote of her bleak concrete study in the library of Hollins, and how its starkness helped her to live in her imagination. I suppose here may be something to that. I would much prefer, though, in the moments when I stare into space in search of a word, to stare blankly at the shifting leaves of a maple, or the parade of dogs out for walks on the street below me.