I waited a lot in the beams of sunlight that kicked up life’s microcosmic particles of dust. Got the hair cut too severe on top of my head because I didn’t like to pay more than twenty for the experience.
One dog ate a couch I’d bought with an ex at the goodwill. It was a green and blue job with the blue part of the design embossed in the stitchery of economic madness. Another dog ate the first four cellphones I ever owned because he found them to be a barrier between the two of us. Now that’s a numerology I can get behind. When he died, I sat in those same beams of light, the same dusty flakes feathering back to earth around me, and I wondered what the fucking purpose of forcing these experiences onto each other is.
I’m no philosopher and emotion got the better part of that day, but it’s a notion I come back to time and again. I know loss well enough. But I also know the disappearance of self into the default settings of two dimensional reactiveness. I know the way the bright light of morning can change into paranoiac distraction, the way flashing lights coming from behind can kick in a panic attack that doesn’t leave until well after those bright blasts have vanished. It’s a conversation you have with yourself, pacing breaths, the internal combustion of salt and chemicals implying a future of frayed complications that keep you up in the dark hours.
Here is the succulence of a desert cactus flavored with relief. And here, here is a blank chart. The only way out is to mark it up with your failures. Back into the frying pan.
by Hank Cherry
