Category: Poetry

I fell into a cavern, though it felt more like a basic crevice than anything. Aside from my personal interpretation, this cavern presented an imminent threat to my balance as I tumbled through its mouth (thankfully wearing elbow pads). I knew, right then and there, that it would be at least seven or eight seconds before I could right myself and take a look at my various bodily injuries (thankfully none on my elbows). I looked at my watch as I continued to fall, timing my perception and seeing just how accurate my prediction would turn out. After nine seconds of continual falling, I gave up on my short-sighted dream of becoming a soothsayer and let gravity take its toll.

Rate this scenario on a scale of one to pineapple: Aunt Johnny gallops into the backyard with a mop on her head in place of what most people would expect to be a wig. As this mop is still dripping from the last time it was used to clean floors, it’s quite obvious that Aunt Johnny was desperate for a head covering and had nowhere to turn but the local elementary school’s janitor’s closet (pardon me, custodial office). Aunt Johnny is oblivious to such critical social missteps, and chooses to ignore the stares as she streaks through the residential neighborhood. Everyone in a three-block radius can smell a particularly enchanting combination of bleach and pine-scented floor cleaner, though only 19% of said sniffers will ever understand why this aroma wafted past them.

Night mobilizes day into a frenzy of regret to be conquered with tedious labor for the sole purpose of initiating the guilt sequence in individuals who would otherwise have the common decency to leave well enough alone and prepare a simple meal for a small group of friends and discuss the nature of their lives up to that point (hoping to uncover latent similarities and conjure visions of what friendship may produce in an ideal world).

Syrup has a strange existence. It doesn’t have the flow of a pocketwatch, nor the sting of a turpentine fairy’s scepter in the middle of a February blizzard. No. Syrup smacks of squeezed opportunity, the kind you’d find on your walk to the neighborhood dentist while conversing with a friend you’d just made the night before over bridge and lattes.

I shrank my entire city down into a nutshell, quite literally. I wrapped it in foil and stuck it in my pocket for the commute to work. But just as I was about to walk out the door, I realized that my concept of space and time had been irreparably altered. Throwing the door off its hinges, I greeted the blankness that immediately enveloped me from every angle. I searched my pocket for the condensed metropolis, but that too had vanished. I shouldn’t have done such a foolish thing, especially before I’d had anything to eat for the day.

Flecked with indifference and, otherwise, a pain that can’t be covered by insurance, I gaped at my ancestors for a solid seven minutes without realizing that my vigil would be viewed by the world at large as a strange session of staring at nothing in particular. It wasn’t until I made it back home for the evening that I took all those vacant glares into account, and by that time I’d already forgotten why I reached out to my ancestors in the first place. Something to do with losing the family farm, I think.