my mornings are spelled like morning

I can’t remember anything I’ve ever read—not a single sentence—but I know what to do in the mornings.

This morning, I said “I am determined to have a positive attitude.” And I sucked down an iced coffee to shake the codene haze. Maybe you use NyQuil to sleep.

My mornings are edgy, eh?

No, they’re not. They are special k with strawberries mornings. Crunchy, freeze-dried strawberries in organic one percent that tastes like two.

Doesn’t milk taste like cheese after you swallow it? I mean later. Before you brush your teeth. I have never seen an udder, by the way.

So I shake off the haze, the last tendril of the last dream. I can’t remember this morning’s except the phrase, “ending her reality. Ha!” and the echoing sound of my alarm clock.

Waking always feel like laughing-laughing into-into a canyon-a canyon.

No. No it doesn’t.

Then I shower to wet my hair so I can comb it to look right. Parted and flat. Don’t know why that’s right or who its right for. I wear cowboy boots under my jeans. That’s for me.

It’s because I like to clump. The sound, not the gathering.

Then I stream into my ant hole in this ant pile city.

Shrimp-shaped isn't shapeless

[listen to this post instead]

I was once taught that we are only what we want. That its only desire that motivates us to move and give shape to our time.

But lots of time is shapeless. And sometimes I feel myself wanting of want.

I walked home from my friends house today.

There's a window behind me right now as I write, so I know it’s still gray out there like it was when I just walked home. Still not quite not quite raining. And I sang on my way home. Let me try to think what I sang.

I know.

It started with leaving a message on Anna’s phone. Anna is my love. Her face fits well in the space near mine is why, mostly. I said to her, “Hello Love. It’s Nicholas. Give me a call when you can. Bye.”

I punctuated the message with periods when I spoke it. But then for the rest of the way home I repeated the message to myself, changing the punctuation.

Hello? Love? It’s Nicholas. Give me a call? When you can. Bye. Hello love! It’s Nicholas. Give me a call! When you can? Bye!

A silly game. Right?

That’s what this feels like, sometimes. Not just this this.

My grandmother died of who knows what. Apathy? She died at 78 after a life. When she died she was shrivled like a cooked shrimp. And underweight.

Before, she was once a tall, wide woman, with vibrant lipstick smeared on her lips and off them, too. She wore bright flower patterned blouses. Sometimes there were made of silk and they stuck to her back in the summer when she visited.

She would yell at her husband all the time.

Really. Yell! With an exclamation mark.

And he was stooped over his canes and very clutzy because he wore braces around his knees.

On his way to fight the Japanese he got sick and collapsed in his cabin. Polio. They met and married after that.

I think he decided early on to put up with her yelling because he felt she put up with his polio. We all have these sicknesses. I suppose.

Anyway, she died. And nobody cared. My dad said, “I’m just sad I never had a mother like yours.”