WEAPON

I’m summing up the summer, summing it all up as if this were an ending, not a beginning.

Even minutes are precious now, not like the ones that have already seeped into the permanent past.

Wanna stretch ‘em out, make ‘em last, total ‘em up, list and parse ‘em —- every minute, hour, day, love, loss.

The lists are a compulsion with me, I’m a compulsive list-maker, one more compulsion on yet another list.

Compelled by an unseen hand from inside, from above, from somewhere.

A cache of weapons just beyond consciousness that I clutch in my perpetual defense:

Get that goddam devil, find him. Go inside and kill him.

I reach into the room, flick the light switch on. A sound precedes the milky wash of the of the energy efficient bulb, the suddenness of blinding white water-spotted walls.

I vibrate as I lean into the tub, water gushing onto hard porcelain, dropping plaid shorts make me stumble on the cool tiles.

The sink is surrounded by emollients and fungicides and anti-gravity hocus pocus in a jar, all now required, now for the nightly ritual, fighting gravity on the installment plan, every night a payment.

The face in the mirror bounces, brown eyes tired, tonight, an old face, like the troubles that erode the skin that people once desired.

The electric toothbrush is a weapon, procured to convince my valiant teeth to fight, to stay rooted in my head, to provide a smile.

Steam is filling up the world, and I drift into tomorrow, into a to-do list. And I think:

All of it, the self improving the self esteeming the self obsession — which of these is the fight, which surrender?

Tonight I am a hostage to the universe that will unfold in any case.

I plunge my foot in scalding water, gasping.