acne & warts on the knuckles of now

by shishi

Posted to Stories on 2003-12-11 02:43:00

It gets to be so bald sometimes. Just train rides and cherry pips and elbows and compression air chamber grumbles. And a big amber glass bowl empty in the middle of a table. Vinyl squeaking under its legs and under your legs.

If there was a script of my past I’d take a highlighter and drown bits in fluorescent texta markings, the parts that are fraying in memory, the parts that should have been magical but turned out like a fire extinguisher quells flames. To remake the attenuated pale dribbles. To be able to cradle my glowing past under the covers, to look back with that senseless nostalgia glimmer. It wouldn’t matter that it was gone, and unable to be replicated. I wouldn’t even want to replicate it. Because I’d have it. And then memory replaces the need for nowness. And stabs the need to be a future. Then I could leave all my potentials to die of hunger.
Potential arsonist.
Potential librarian.
Potential tea strainer.
Potential suicide.
Potential biblical resurrection.
Potential lover.
Potential athlete in the 80 year race.
Potential human.
Potential cigarette burn in her fur coat collar.

Instead I eat the air of now without absorbing its nutrition. I sew the tomorrow seeds and promise to prune its leaves when they grow wild. But in clay nothing grows but Spanish tennis magicians. I think I have a doorknob. But I’m not sure.


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