Routines
Envisioning realities
Borges rambles about evenings
Others, exasperate sunrise.
Where chores decoy daydreaming
And one acts not as caretaker
But as slave of her own time.
Now that I leave, I want to travel further
Feel the weight of the hours in my nape
Bleed exhaustion
Throughout the soles of my feet.
Culture broils taste
Rhythmically turning it
Onto the same old faces,
Habit kneads novelty
Onto default replies
Inquisitiveness slips off
Accompanying the Teflon coating
Leaving stuck
Adventure’s charred crust.
As a capsule that dissolves
Inside a glass of water,
Strangers’ gazes, too,
Fizz as they disappear.
We turn for meaning then
To nineties movies
Good Will Hunting, Virgin suicides,
Thelma and Louise.
Here I stand, wondering
How can I trust another persons’ instinct?
Project my rationale into their sturdy wires.
For where I remember smiles he could just see grimaces
And what I sensed as a bond he saw only as trade
Juggling words in a land of euphemisms
Confounding blame for violence-curing elixirs.
© Cecilia Padilla-Iglesias, 2021
