We had gears in our brains. They rust. They rust. We amassed stuff. The dust. The dust. Right now I feel like an immigrant on Ellis Island. I have a ramshackle of possessions, both tangible and emotional, spread across long lost homes. All of it is falling in the cracks and rolling under the door. I think by Chapter 10 I will be left with two double-A's, a single pair of junior high underwear and a crust of cheesy bread.
"Let's say grace."
I am confined to crowded dirty living conditions like a old mutt in an inner-city pound needing a clean towel to sleep on. I play my music so loud smoke fills my room. I hot box death metal. Then I study about Huntington's Disease and hope to get an A on someone's life-stealing illness. I hear my neighbors coughing through the door. Coughing or screaming. Probably screaming about emotional love tension. Emotional love tension or blue shells on Mario Kart.
Spring Break is a free sample at the grocery store. You take it, you give a grin for it, but just as fast as you got it you swallowed it. Nommed it. Then you're left to just push your cart around and buy corn-syrup in a jar, hoping you'll have the courage to humiliate yourself by throwing a last minute treat on the conveyor belt.
"Yeah I need all of this processed food matter. But I need this too."
Dorm rooms, old carpet, broken wood paneling, crumbs, lint, futons, plastic cups, single beds. The other day I stared out the window and closed the blinds because a glare appeared on my desktop. What I want is a piece of Gaia. Not that I can own Our Lady Planet Earth. But here is to hoping she will let me borrow her epidermis just long enough for me to get grass stains on my jeans.
I am pressing my face against the pound's window. My greasy smile smears it all up. Inside is summertime. A bunch of critters awaiting a new home. In a month or so I will have saved enough money to buy one for myself. We grin. We grin.
