I could always find you sitting there with your secondhand malaise

The mental-emotional-physical state I am in is garbage, but at least I have found the epigraph to my next collection of poetry:

"It's a pity the dead are so quiet; it makes us ready to forget them."

—Dorothy L. Sayers, Busman's Honeymoon (1935)

I called on Poseidon, I searched for all his sons

Because the weather has flipped suddenly autumnal and it is now possible to spend more than five minutes outside without melting into protoplasm, rushthatspeaks came by this afternon and sat on the front steps and we talked in person rather than over the iPad, which suffered a near-death experience on Friday and now has a new charger courtesy of selkie, since these days mayflies are envied their lifespans by Apple products.

The excuse for Rush-That-Speaks' visit was a packet of Mermaid Latte which originated with their friend ambyr and which they thought there was a strong chance of my actually liking, since the stuff is essentially an algae-based herbal chai; they requested only that I send them pictures when I tried it. I took a couple of minutes to look up the sole unfamiliar ingredient in order to double-check that it wouldn't kill me—it hasn't so far—and then asked spatch to pull out his phone.

( A drop of water makes an ocean of it all. )

Verdict: it's delicious! It actually tastes less like honey-dipped kelp than I had been hoping, but there is a distinct tidal flavor with vegetal undertones combining to suggest that when a salt marsh and a peat bog love each other very much, they go to a coffee shop and order a vegan chai latte. Having never before encountered butterfly pea flower, blue spirulina, ashwagandha, or whichever species comes under the header of "Arctic sea algae," I'm not sure how to distinguish their contributions from the general air of drinkable littoral, but the coconut and the honey and the five-spice powder are all present and correct. And it looks oceanic, which charms me even without latte art. I haven't had a powdered chai mix I could drink in years. I am delighted this is the one I've got.

P.S. And a package from yhlee just arrived, containing books and a beautiful jellyfish by Stephanie Pui-Mun Law. This has been a significant improvement of a day.