Images, Lately

Brief and evocative.

The snapped stalk of a dandelion, too tall still, in the planter on my walk home. Residue on my fingertips. Smells nothing like the cleaner in my kitchen. They’re supposed to be the same thing.

The biggest house sparrow I’ve ever seen. Yelling at me. Very upset.

An old woman. I hold the door open for her and she glares. So much for that, I think, and stroll ahead to the next set of doors, the ones going outside. I pull. It’s a push door. That woman glowers at me.

Walls. The paint color. Step out of the shower and into three years ago.

Mist swirling in a incandescent-lit parking lot. Midnight, or ten. I could almost be in New York, a separate person entirely. Fog, light, dark. The lamp astigmatizes. Starbursts in the water vapor.

It’s funny when I think it, in a sad kind of way. But when I say it he does not laugh.

Peanuts, strewn every day on my windowsill in hopes of blue jays. They disappear; I leave more. House sparrow, pigeon, a crow in the distance. I’m hopeful. Then one evening I pull back the curtains. A squirrel’s tail flickers away. The windowsill is bare.

The brick is crumbling. A car pulls out of the parking lot. I keep looking at the mortar.

Even my eyelids are dehydrated now. It shouldn’t be this hard to blink. My reflection is tired of me and I am tired of her, but onwards we go, red-eyed, into the next day, and the next, and the next.

On my walk all I can think is: at least there is this. A robin hopping in the grass.

The steps are too narrow, too steep. My eyes are slightly out of focus. I see in pixel squares. I’m worried I’ll stumble and I’m lucky I don’t. The carpet is stained. The steps are tall.

Dandelions by the tracks. The train comes in; wishes rush out of its way, haphazard, panicked.

Streetlight! People! Livin’ just to find emotion!