1. Found Objects

Yellow radio sits on the bicycle’s handlebars. A quaint system playing that song I somehow associate with you although we are hardly connected. The man riding is making no statement at all, just spinning wheels to facilitate his travel. Portability means different things to different people.

Birds align on rooftops until one decides to take off. A flying circus. I have no place to go and my ears are getting cold.

Split in two, left behind, something like a fork and spoon lies perfectly framed between the cracks. White against the concrete. I’m not sure which exists. To pick it up would be responsible; I chose to make a photograph. Evidence makes meaning. The street smells like garbage.

At home again, or not at all, dust scatters in the light. The neighbor lets his dog bark. I am at a loss.

2. Prescription

Acetaminophen for headaches, both natural and unnatural.

Prevacid for stomach, acid reflux related pain, eating too much or too little.

Lexapro for anxiety, fictional or nonfictional.

Antibiotics for sinus-related infections, severe or insignificant.

Vitamins and decongestants taken as needed.

Alcohol for everything else.

3. Drop Dead

“I swear to god she’s going to live forever.”

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“Sure it’s a good thing, but it would be better if I didn’t have to waste my weekends taking care of her. It’s not like I don’t have my own problems to deal with.”

—

“Well who else would do it? She has no friends, she is too selfish for friends.”

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“No I won’t. If I ever get like that I need to drop dead.

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“Of course I’m upset. Didn’t I tell you about the cat?”

—

“It had a tumor the size of a soccer ball on its belly. But in order to operate the doctor said it needed to gain some weight. So I had to go over to her house 5 times a day and feed it this special formula.”

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“No, she said it was going to drop dead anyway so why should she bother feeding it.”

—

“Well, I fed it all day Saturday and 4 times on Sunday. But when I went over last night for the final dose…it was dead.”

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“The opposite. She actually broke down and began to wail about her poor cat and how could god take him from her. I’ll tell you who god needs to take…”

4. Neurotics Anonymous

…and then showering and going to the allergist and doing taxes and rushing home to clean up and do some work to allow time to eat and exercise and find a job and settle down and get a 401K plan or Roth IRA or whatever the financial planner thinks you should get so you can make joint decisions and be smart with money and no dairy or carbs or smoking or drinking or anything else that might potentially cause later harm because the future is all you have or most of what you should worry about because who knows where social security might be and the government these days can’t seem to manage anything so look both ways and get saved or donate something to charity and save receipts for tax write-offs and good karma and nuclear families not nuclear bombs ’cause what is war really good for and in the end the love…

5. Gone

Puppy love. I named him Chip. He had a predominantly black coat of hair on top which was complimented by the white hair on his undersides. His face had little tan spots under his eye and his tail was a gorgeous, shaggy spiral of black with a white stripe down the middle.

That bushy tail was his trademark–his calling card.

Chip pranced like a deer. He played frisbee, tag, and slept in my tent whenever I decided to camp out in the backyard.

But just like me, Chip eventually grew restless on our farm. He began to take weeklong trips, but he would always came back. I would see his beautiful tail moving through the field, and then he’d pounce up into my arms and lick my face for hours.

Then one day he didn’t return. His food bowl left untouched.

Four years later Chip showed up, pouncing and licking. But he had no tail. Just a stub, flapping in excitement. I spent the night sleeping next to him on the grass, searching his face for a clue as to what happened. The only thing he could tell me was that the world was too big to stay in one place. And that it isn’t good to be too attached to anything. In the morning he left, never to return.