patience
does not become me. i try to slow down, to wait (‘they also serve…’), but i’m terrible at it. i rush through songs, i tick off my list-for-the-day like a housewife on meth. i meet new people and crash course their autobiography. at work i smack the plates down on the table even as i try, so help me, to gently settle the food onto the paper mat. driving cross country i count not miles, but states, hurtling through the imaginary dotted lines that atlas-separates Kansas from Iowa. i drink beer like water at a just-made-it oasis. i eat shovelfuls of Chinese and suck up Pu Pu like a Hoover. perhaps i am racing towards the end of my life. or maybe i’m trying to see, touch, experience, absorb everything and everyone in my path as quickly as possible so as to not miss anything. i watch myself roar down the road in 5th gear but it never slows me down. i rev the engine, i lurch through life. Buddha would have a problem with me.
This is an excerpt from my book, The Paragraphs — Cutlass Press
About The Paragraphs and how to order
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