five little essays:
window, door, vanilla, pan, pistol

Window
A woman hangs a damp towel on a hook. It’s the season when the sugar maple may be any maple. The cat, wrapped in a delicate handkerchief brought from Kyoto some odd weeks ago, is buried in its shade. The syncopated clouds move overhead. Smell of oranges. Girth of sunflower. Sanguine petal pushers.

Or rather, I was careless. A bottlecap in the pocket of my cut-offs. I called the sun this little thing. I noted its rotation around the earth. Pink, I said. Unravel.

Perhaps we need the mirage as surely as the mirage needs us. If isinglass is fish bladder; if eyedrops bourbon; if amorphous mesh; if lonely; if s p r a w l. If, then. Yes. If. Then. And on we go.

Door
The itinerary is attached to the refrigerator. A magnet in the shape of a pushpin. The woman strikes the sides of the coffee cup with a spoon as she stirs in honey brought from Boston. The honey was made by bees from another woman’s husband.

I took no thing personal that spring. I was hardly a person, after all. A penchant for bread and gold. I tried three-card poker. I trusted no one.

When mingled with a lubricant, steam becomes water. We measure our dreams with yardsticks and dollies. We are asked no questions; we tell no lies.

Vanilla
The bottle is dark and quite small and somewhere behind the old bay, the dried basil, the dish towel with the lemons brought from Mexico so long ago that the bringer has been forgotten. Ricochet of light on the countertop. Imitation.

Or, I was hungry. The scale. All morning, I made promises to myself that I would let myself grow hungrier still. The gnawing. The dog with her bone at my feet.

We mistake the ephemeral for the everlasting. We earn our rank then lose it. Toggle and ramble. Nothing held can be had.

Pan
A pan soaks in the sink. Squirt of blue soap. Unused blue sponge. Sky likely blue beyond but so many walls. Perpendicular, plastered. Rectangles cut into the walls and glass placed into the rectangles. But curtains.

I think I’d thought that lying a paperback on my thighs and taking a photograph might translate to a hotel on the banks of a river in a town I could not pronounce.

Perhaps desire is illusory. We want and want until we no longer want nor are no longer wanted. Certainly it is arbitrary. The swinging cable of a crane. A little before noon.

Pistol
A pearl-handled pistol in a grandmother’s glovebox. A handbag lined with fabric on which the shape of roses have been pressed by a machine. Long ago. So had. Heat. Heather in a field. Lavender.

I’ve lived long enough that my virginity has become a small percentage of my existence. A dust of opium on the eyelids. Cherry lipsmacker. Some July.

So often we’re disarmed. No. Not often enough are we disarmed. Too few pivots in the meadow.