5:54 PM PST - Sept. 14, 2004
squeeze
it starts with the shame of your hand against the gray kitchen window, the jamming of your knuckle murderous on glass and how your victim can zig and zag around your nose and hair, their maniacal buzzing in your ear. shameful, really, how God gave us nothing: no wings, no composite eyes, no climbing up and down the dusty green walls, and how we are not satisfied with just one drop of orange juice or the gristle of a gnawed chicken bone. and even now as i start to wash the first of many dinner dishes with the wet soap and the old pork in my nausea i think of Sartre and how convenient in this nausea to quote Sartre since it's the only Sartre i really remember: I exist. It's sweet, so sweet, so slow... and really, as i stop the rush of hot water and squeeze more blue Dawn into the sink i know i can do this: take it slow. steady. life can last a little longer than this evening if necessary. death need not be so quick. make my wrist a young tree branch. my fingers feathers. lower the air conditioning of the house. cold- blooded and all. let joy not be in the bullshit journey or the meticulous preparation or the chopstick zen of the hunt but in the child of me, the magnifying glass and the sun, the match and bottle and gasoline, the silent gray cat-anger and the knowing that yes, there is now one life within my palm. it is mine.
