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Vacuum Cleaning
Moving on with the same old new intentions
I took care to preserve a sticky note, attached to my desk, and finally after many weeks of shuffling folders and notepads around it, read the note and realized I didn't need this note anymore. We were
trains on tracks, passing close but never touching. The idea of merging was finished. Then I became and observed there are no solutions. Only casualties. We are drying grapes on the city’s vine, headed to vintage.
She was across the city but our paths were serpentine contradictions. I was in the sky and it was different from up above.
The last thing I did was vacuum. I unwound the cord, carried the plug to the wall socket and inserted it like my hands were consequences. I sucked up the dog hair and lint, the dust and crumbs until I reached the edge
of the couch torn from dogs and use and my nervous heel when I waited for you to arrive home. Then I watched
out the window which had never felt so much like a painting, my life a museum, and I, a very dense paper figurine. I was standing again, had always been good at standing. Then I stored
the cord on the vacuum’s side and rolled it to the end of the hallway. I did not even make it to the closet. I stopped short. And noticed I stopped short. I noticed how everything had sucked
inside the cleaner’s belly. Everything that had been on the floor was now in the vacuum. What was thought to be dirty was now clean.
I thought about dumping it in the trash. But there was still plenty of space in the dustbin, and there would be more to vacuum soon.
Hey, I’m Roman. I’m working on my debut novel, 20xx, a work in magical realism. I write on Substack.
