It’s the docile waking-hours.
Today, I offer up my arid exhalation.
My hair, it is grasping for re-paralysis
My curtain is a sheet of metal hanging over a sheet of metal.
But in the corner? There is my sun:
My last, red apple
I peel it plainly. I examine it. (I take nothing into account.)
That is the big reckoning.
This place and I try to compromise every morning,
Today, I guess my skills with a paring knife will go unnoticed. That’s alright.
I’ll give the room some more time.
And as I devour, slice, devour like an intelligent little beast, I can only think of us.
There is not one ounce of supplication between the two of us—
Oh, yes. Yes. The two of us. I remember what we knew about each other from yesterday’s paper. Our silence wedged between the editorials and the business section. No text was considered. For all I can tell, the stock market is a waste of ink. The satire fell short of our imagination.
To quote myself verbatim:
“You want a good translation!? I’ll show YOU a good translation!”
And then I washed my hands with fervor and never walked away at all…
—I look back to my apple-stained hands.
The walls now fragrant with the declarative steam of winter’s machine,
The core is buried in the trash now. I shake away my undoing.
Upon my desk, delighted, I realize
A cup of tea is brewing.
Suddenly, a ghoulish giggle flutters from my girlish heart.
If I could only tell you how much I dream to scrub away the New York Times.
The way that I can scrub my girlish hands, my lady’s paring knife.
But we’re all new to this type of failure. This type of falling.
So I clap my hands to my neck, dearly. I press down, hard.
No, my dear, that’s not how it ought to be, not how it ought to be at all.
-Kelly McMahan