Days

Some days are much better than others. You get a postcard from someone you don’t hate. There’s also a small check. The kittens play with a ’57 Chevy Hot Wheels car on the wood floor. You take the check and leave the house. Lock the door. Swing open the gate and step into the wind. Hungry.

The sun acts just right, and prowling clouds move like wild boar snorting through the sky. Wind finds its way into your ears and nostrils, bringing in faintly reminiscent odors of summer storm cat piss, and the vague decaying rot of persimmon. You walk 15 zigzag blocks to the store through residential catacombs. Each house decorated with simplistic personality. A beige one, with 16 blossoming potted red carnation bushes catches the eye. The sea green mist contemporary, with a single shrub in the front yard shaped like a buxom farm wife. A shaggy overgrown shack with pumpkin plants cushioning the parameter. All this on the way to the store.

Not the stupid 24-hour store, “The Stupor Market.” The fancy store. You grab the green-retard-sized cart and hunching, stalk the aisles. You get the sea scallops. You get the stinky, runny cheese with sticky rivers of blue goo spidering through it. You get radicchio & white onion, Shitakes & limes. One albino eggplant. Sunset splashed Queen Anne cherries, pounds of them; you stuff innocent handfuls into a paper bag like a savage scavenger. 4 coffee-colored plums. An Australian Cabernet and a Kenwood table red. Baguette the shape and size of an elk horn. Pay for the shit and tip the dog outside tied, with a quick scratch on the muzzle. She leaps at the scent of your groceries, but you’re already gone. 

Cut home through the park. Past dykes on both sides in two fields playing Knock ‘em Sock ‘em softball, yelling at each other impatiently. Whacking screaming, shrunken skulls down the third base line. Better men than most men. Better men than me. Enter the trees. Alter course for the house.

Bust in door. Ignite coils. Smack the pan. Blast scallops with eggplant, mushroom, Kenwood, a smash of dill weed and salt. Squeeze that lime. Flip in air, catch with plate. Drink the bottle down. Eat the food. Crush the fruit into your mouth with impunity. Open the Australian. Pour it. Drink it until it misses your mouth and spills right down your shirt. Forget the scallops were sandy. Drink the wine. See the empty Hot Wheels car on the lonely floor. Wonder where kittens hide from giants. Remember the postcard. Forget that you were hungry. Forget what day it is.