No living witness
Scrubbing dishes in the soup splattered sink. To be able to tell myself later that I had given it an honest try. You can lie to yourself about anything you want if there’s no one following up.
Jumbling and jostling around and splashing like a child with a house hose and speak of the Devil Himself out the kitchen window now appeared some actual children next door darting around with a hose of their own on the shared grass which is probably why I thought of the hose analogy in the first place just there.
Reminding me also I should get to cutting the grass.
Fine.
I will cut the grass tomorrow.
Do you ever hold the door open for someone at the grocery store or vice versa or perhaps someone waves to you to go through first in traffic and you want to weep for the world over it?
The entire history of the world.
Everyone who has ever lived and died.
How kind we can all be to one another when it costs us nothing.
My tablet reading the news out loud in the voice of a woman who never once breathed air saying they or we or those guys over there had found microplastics in the clouds in the mountains of eastern China and saying also that this was bad news because certain toxic metals like lead and mercury and other elements could cling to the plastic particles and be carried this way and that on the rain and wind to the places where it matters when bad things happen to people.
Describing it all in the same measured radio reporter tone and cadence that they’ll use to say something like terrorists are sneaking across the border. Which they also started saying explicitly in the next segment and is probably why I thought of the analogy.
That always seemed like such an Odyssean effort to me. When I hear them tell tall tales of these poor sons of bitches supposedly traveling thousands of miles over air and sea and land with nothing and with no one to maybe if all goes exactly right kill some random Americans on the other side of it.
(?)
And no hope whatsoever of it being one of our main guys. More likely it’s the least powerful American you can gain access to.
I was going to say desperate people do not kill desperate people for no reason but that is wrong. Most guys I ever heard of who wanted to kill someone just turn to the nearest weakest person available and get it over with and then regret it instantly.
Oh God what have I done and all of that. Carrying on like that. I’m so sorry etcetera.
Then into the hole.
Forget about it though because that border story is not real so I do not have to think about it for one second longer. Never mind that Americans are fully eager to and capable of killing other Americans. No one can massacre one of us like one of us.
Unlike most other dirty jobs we do not need to outsource that one out to migrants.
I do not want to waste my life on revenge.
I’m not particularly well read but I know nothing good comes from that in the books.
From what I understand digging a grave to dump a body into is famously hard work but it can be done with effort. Covering it back over is another thing entirely. A hole that can never be filled no matter how vigorously you shovel.
Now the kids are fighting one another. Worrying over who gets to wield the water’s force.
I thought just now of the copperhead snake we almost tripped over hiking in the woods by the lake. The noise we both made. And later what I thought was possibly a cougar standing just off to the side of the trail sizing us up. Doing mathematical calculations in its mind about distance and velocity and force and mass and so on. However cats measure the edible world. You said you were sure it wasn’t a cougar and I said how do you know.
There will be no doubt in your mind that you have have seen a cougar if you ever see one you said. There will be no question at all.
I want to live so badly. And go on living without this pain or any kind of pain.
And I yearn for you not here right now drying these dishes as I hand them over to no one.
We have starved one another.
We are famished.
I want for you like the grinding garbage disposal asks for my hand.