Outside, the morning sun falls across the driveway in striations of coral on the light blue snow. Inside, the cat is on high alert, staring at a cabinet door.
Absurdly loud in the silent house, the tsk! tsk! of the regulator clock measures the heartbeat of a brand new Friday. Everyone is asleep but me.
And I wonder about the case of my self: was I really extraordinary? Or the opposite: impulsive and selfish—small.
Mine is a world of superlatives: coffee in the morning and wine at night, concentration and irresponsibility, the sun's warmth on another two inches of snow that fell during the night.
I work so hard, and then I just don't give a damn.
So we beat on, boats against the current, and then suddenly with it—a fist clenched then slackened as the blood is drawn. I form resentments then melt them, mourning a mother I despised as a child.
What other pottery is there to break and repair?—my life a kintsugi of abuses and profligate affections. My heart was always in it until ... it wasn't.
The kitchen smells like coffee and sleeping dogs.
I line up my pens and ruler and magnifying glass in a squad across the table. What shall we take the measure of this day? I never struggled with boredom—only control. I contort my handwriting into 90-degree angles and straight lines because my curves are so ugly. The brittle marks please me, marching across the paper like a navy blue hieroglyph.
Presence and absence, fondness and disregard, the dishes form a strata on the countertop: fossilized mashed potatoes, the purple crust at the bottom of a wine glass, a wooden spoon pointing straight up from the basin like a soldier shot in a trench.
Everything is motionless except the sun, high above the garage now, eradicating the shadows. The neighbor's car door verifies that another day is underway.
No comments:
Post a Comment