She Can’t Remember

A new year brings the promise of more longanimity and asceticism. Nothing is as safe she expects in the age of vulnerability and shame.

She liked it more when every emotional situation didn’t need a “name” where you could “hold” it in its “safe space.”

There is no room for nostalgia, but she has no use for these “isms” either.

She wants to crawl into a garbage can large enough to hold her and live out the rest of her days like that lady in Beckett’s Happy Days — remember, she has no room for nostalgia.

But there are bills to pay and some sort of food preparations to be made if she wants to continue on living in this hovel.

And there is the crow.

Always that crow! She inherited it from someone she cared about deeply once, but she can’t remember quite who.

The crow is tethered to the radiator and has to be fed often. And if the food isn’t placed just so, on time, the cawing is insufferable.

No room for nostalgia, but she longs for the halcyon days of pandemic when she knew what to expect — even if it was the worst.

This new post-apocalypse state of being is a bit dull. And this noisome, pediculous crow leaves much to be desired.

What I’m Reading:

I thought it was unfair, and then I understood that, alone and terrified, anger was my only weapon against the horror.

— Jacqueline Harpman / I Who Have Never Known Men