Honk if you're lonely tonight*

I don't think I can read any more apocalypse stories.



When I first moved into this basement apartment I was apprehensive about using the two burners sunk into the narrow, poorly constructed countertop on account of the fact that something in them doesn't work quite right; the burners will not light on their own, even though technically that is what they are meant to do. Thus anytime anyone desires to use one or both of the burners they must turn on the gas and put fire to it in the form of a lighter or a match. I was apprehensive about lighting one or both of the gas burners with a lighter or a match because I was a bit worried that I'd blow the whole place up. Consequently for several months I did not use the burners any time I was alone in the apartment; I would use them only on weekends, when he was available to help me light a fire under my scrambled eggs. On the other days I ate most of my meals cold.

At some point, I suppose, I must have forgotten all those nights I cooked on the little gas campstove from the pack on my back.

These days I must be back to remembering. I turn on the gas, jam my fingers between the metal spikes that suspend pots and pans above the flame, and flick the lighter. I put the water on to boil and it is not until several minutes later, when I sit down at this borrowed laptop to write, that I realize I am no longer afraid to light one or both of the burners on my own.


I am making a mug of chamomile tea.

When the water has come to a roiling boil I wrap my shirt sleeve around the pot, lift it from the burner, turn off the gas, and pour the still-boiling water over the tea bag, which swells grotesquely and spasms a little in the water.


Humans boil lobsters alive, and snakes swallow their prey that way too.


Today he waited in line at the post office to retrieve my new book and my flower essences. Supposedly they will help my body heal from the trauma of having snapped my ankle and hopped on one leg 5.5 miles out of the backcountry.

One of the weirdest parts is that it still does not quite feel like my leg, my foot, my ankle. It feels a bit like somebody has sewn a new leg, a new foot, and a new ankle onto the right side of my body while I slept, only the parts aren't all from the same factory and they don't quite go together.

Luckily I have found a woman who is helping me. She travels down into the deepest layers of tissue and invites my body to let go of its clinging so that my leg and my ankle and my foot can return to where they used to be.

I cannot resent my body for getting so out of sorts. It was simply trying to protect me.


I owe that brother and sister and that old wilderness ranger and that smiling golden retriever a great debt of gratitude.



He was going to patch the backside of his pants yesterday, but he didn't do it.


I don't think I have had sex under the covers for going on a decade, if ever.


I am hopeless for you. I melt to a warm, gooey substance seemingly incapable of making major decisions.

Also I am so stubborn. I obsess over this more than anyone I know.


I could look for an ambient tape hiss. 



If...

Then what?!



*with great thanks and admiration for Silver Jews