Reminder to Self
Whichever…
Reminder to self that this artisanal collecting, pantry stuffing, closet fattening, money-out / thing-in lifestyle is a Ricky Jay conjuring from an obsolete playbook that sends you and me racing for the exits in a sudden fit of ferocious boredom that demands shaking off like a mink coat you never intended to own and now it owns you / and you wish you knew how to stop wanting more and stop wanting to fill every minute with downy soft / plush / high thread-count / the touch the feel of cotton / the genuine article /
two pairs of headlights twinkling in the dark in the garage, sharing a private joke because the joke’s on us / because they don’t need us, never did, but we ache for them like a fever rattling the soul /
and we go searching for a cure for a disease / a dis-ease / we never could name convincingly / but I’ll take a stab and call it a perpetual gnawing suspicion like an earworm that never leaves / whispering that the world is shrinking so fast, the blue marble will no longer be visible to our naked eye when we wake up tomorrow / or the next day / or some day soon / and then we each will stand alone spinning slowly in tiny circles until the spinning, mercifully, ends us / or we take matters into our own hands and end her first / whichever.
Amy L. Bernstein is feeling pessimistic.
