Do Not Disturb

“Did you eat?” Katie asks after I get home from the reading.

“No, I didn’t think it would run so long,” I reply as the cat puts a querying paw on my leg, then jumps up on my lap.

She takes a minute to settle in and shortly is purring like an electrical transformer.

“Well, I guess you’re gonna starve to death,” Katie says with a pitying look, and the cat still purrs.

Ask For Help

The pill pocket for the cat’s antiviral doesn’t make her any more amenable to taking her medicine, but we gotta try.

This time, just when it looks like it’s down, she coughs it up, sending it flying across the room, which alerts her sister to try to grab the “treat.” Can’t let that happen so, still holding the first cat, I bend at an entirely inappropriate angle and grab it, only to feel something in my ribs go “pop.”

Later when I’m complaining to Katie about my sore ribs, she says, “Well maybe you should learn to ask for help.”

Attempts At Librarian Humor

I’m in the stacks at the library when I hear a man at the reference desk talking to an employee.

“You’re a librarian so you should know that, right?” he asks slowly.

“Well, there are a lot of things we’re supposed to know, but I don’t think that’s one of them,” the librarian replies, clearly trying to keep his cool.

“No, it’s a joke, man, just answer the question,” the man says.

Can’t Just Be Dancing Like You’re A Kid

“My shoulder hurts,” Katie says, demonstrating like she’s dancing in an 80s music video with an exaggerated roll of her right shoulder. “I don’t know, though, I only did a little work today….”

“Is it ‘cause we danced last night?” which we did, at the concert.

“Oh god!” she exclaims, stricken with the knowledge that time continues to march on.

Enthusiasm

The woman in front of us at the concert is… a lot. A leopard print tube top and a black mini skirt, and when she asks, rhetorically, after stepping on toes getting in and out of her row, “Who raised me?” we sort of think the answer might be, “No one.”

But as the concert goes on, and she is singing every song to her slightly less enthusiastic boyfriend, dancing like no one is watching, and almost collapsing with ecstasy every time the artist plays a song she likes, she’s starting kind of grow on me.She is having the best time,  she’s not hurting anyone, and her boyfriend seems to really like her, so who am I to yuck their yum?

Hardware Store

“How many items?” the cashier asks, looking at her screen in confusion, then at my purchases, then back to the screen. 

“I think it’s six,” I answer, because it is.

She adds then up again, and, satisfied at last with her answer, finishes ringing me up and hands me a receipt.

As I’m leaving, the young man working the other register flirts with her, teasing, “When the door opened, you totally got goose bumps, yes you did!”

I Wasn’t Talking To You

I spot him halfway down the block: a full-sized, rough-coat, brindle dachshund coming down the steps and out the little iron gate of one of Park Slopes innumerable brownstones.

So I do what you do when confronted by beauty and grace, that is, my face erupts with a goofy smile, and I make direct eye contact with him. His scruffy little beard lifts in a dignified acknowledgement of my tribute and I think we’re basically done here.

But his owner, seeing my delight, somehow thinks it’s appropriate to insert himself into our interaction with what seems to me as a slightly can-I-help-you “Hi,” but I choose to ignore his tone, give him a friendly, “Hello, great dog,” and keep it moving.

Part 2

The same time of day, the same spot in the park. Sunshine and shade and the gulls far above, resting on thermals without moving their wings.

This time I’m talking with my mom. When I hang up the phone, I glance at my email to see a required form for my disability leave, and although it wasn’t as upsetting as yesterday’s brush with social media, the day is still suddenly distant, and the sunshine hard to see.

A Lovely Afternoon Spoiled

I put down my notebook, satisfied with my work on this poem today. It takes a second, looking out from the shade where I’m sitting on the grass, for my eyes to adjust to the late afternoon sunshine filling the rest of the park: lawns sloshing with gold, people playing ball like they’re swimming in luminous air.

And for some reason I pick up my phone. “I wonder if that idiot responded to my scathing comment on his post,” I think, swiping my Lock Screen to wake the beast.

No need to fake it

The security guard manning the metal detector at the entrance to the arena looks at my cane while I put my phone and keys in the little bin.

“You got a hip or a knee replacement?” he asks.

I mean, neither? but instead I say, “Yeah, I got all kinds of problems down here,” waving at my lower body with a sort of all-encompassing gesture.

He looks at me suspiciously, then finally waves me around the metal detector and up an access ramp. 

Old Man Playing Mobile Games

The older man and woman sit across from me on the train, a wheeled walker in front of her. He stares down into his phone, which is how I know that the tinny, repetitive, nursery-rhyme-sounding instrumental music is probably coming from him. She stares off into space as he stabs and flicks at phantoms on his screen, while the music loops over and over its irritating, mournful evocation of a blank-eyed child sitting alone in a room turning a crank on a music box, forever.

I breathe deeply, trying to calm this strange mix of grief and anger simmering in my chest, until they finally get off the train at 42nd Street.

Biohazard

“I found where those flies were coming from,” Katie says in a tone of flat dread. At her feet lies a plastic bag she’s pulled from the cabinet labeled “organic potatoes,” but nothing in the shape of the bag would indicate the contents of the bag to be even solid, let alone potato-shaped, and some of whatever remains in the bag has leaked a foul, brown-ish black liquid onto the tiles.

“Oh god,” I reply, which seems like a sensible thing to say, especially since I know that I’m the one who put the biohazard-formerly-known-as Organic Potatoes in said cabinet to begin with.

“Yeah, you are neither mentally nor spiritually prepared for what’s in here,” she continues, peering into the depths of the bottom shelf in horror.

Is This Code-Switching?

The man and woman who sit outside the grocery store have a sort of sing-song patter for panhandling. “Can you spare anything god bless you sir can you spare anything god bless you ma’am can you spare anything ….” etc. in dulled voices almost robotic.

When I realized halfway through cooking dinner that I’d forgotten something, I went back to the store, and the couple were still there, this time though there were two women chatting with them, and I listened in, while pretending not to, as I walked into the store.

“Yeah, you know, I haven’t watched just ‘cause I don’t have a TV right now, but I’ve heard it’s really good,” the woman who’s usually panhandling says in a not at all robotic voice, and it’s nice to hear her normal speaking voice.

Chiropractic Advice

“Books are great,” says the disembodied voice of my chiropractor above me. I’m facedown on the table while he shoves my bones around inside me, and I was complaining about how my vision just seems to be getting worse probably because I read so much.

“But what you really need to do is go outside for a while, and look at the farthest thing you can see for fifteen, twenty minutes,” he continues as he pushes my pelvis down and over into an entirely new configuration. “That’ll help exercise your eyes, just fifteen, twenty minutes.”

Counterfeit

“Can I see that?” Katie asks, pointing to what looks like a twenty dollar bill with the word “FAKE” stamped on it sitting on the bookstore counter.

“Sure,” says the proprietor. “You can kinda tell it’s fake, just the texture and everything.”

“Funny thing is, most people don’t know that Andrew Jackson had the word ‘FAKE’ tattooed on his forehead like that,” I add while Katie strokes the counterfeit with a thoughtful look on her face.

Kindness

We’ve gotten most of the bags downstairs, and I’m putting them in the van, but with the elevator out-of-order, Katie is having to bring the boxes down.

But then I hear the freight elevator, working despite the signs saying it’ll be unavailable! And out of the elevator, with a huge load of boxes and a smile, comes Katie, followed by a nice looking older black man who laughs at my apparent look of astonishment.

“I saw your husband’s knee was bad,” he says, still laughing, and referring to my itchy brace, “so I thought you might need a hand.”

Everyone’s Fair Share Of Abuse

“From the river to the sea!” the woman out in the plaza of the library shouts through a bullhorn. The five people standing in a limp group off to one side weakly echo her chant. 

Their demonstration? protest? let’s say “activity” continues as I push through the revolving doors into the cool, quiet of the library lobby.

When I come out, a different woman has the bullhorn, which she uses to recite Israeli atrocities to the passersby while a woman at the top of the stairs learns to skip rope double-Dutch style. 

Greece Is Nice In The Fall

“Any travel outside the country?” the slightly bored receptionist at doctor’s office asks as usual.

“Nope,” I answer, also as usual. “If I’m leaving the country, you’re gonna be the first person I tell, like you won’t be able to get me to shut up about it.”

He laughs as I continue, “‘Yo I just got back from Greece,’ I’ll say.”

Sunset

August has given up its sullen heat, and we stroll comfortable in the dusk. 

The western sun bruises the sky orange and neon purple through the trees. We can see it as we cross the street.

“I wonder if she uses the same acupuncturist as me,” Katie asks the sunset thoughtfully, rubbing her arm.

Real Breed

“Mercy,” the man drinking a light beer by the pond where people bring their dog’s to swim says sharply, “stop bugging that dog.”

“What breed is Mercy,” Katie asks as a thin, nervous looking dog trots over to him wearing a guilty expression.

“A blue lacey,” he says as if this is something we would have heard of, ah yes, blue lacey, of course, everyone knows the blue lacey, should have guessed just by looking.

“I think he’s just making up names,” I mutter to Katie after Mercy and her owner have left.

And By “Drugs” We Of Course Mean “Catnip"

The cats stand poised with looks of confused sorrow beside the piles of crumpled packing paper they’ve been nesting in all evening, then they scatter.

“We’re stealing their toys from them!” I lament as I stuff the paper into the recycling bag to go to the curb.

“They’ve been fighting over it all night, and they have other toys,” Katie says dismissively.

“Sure, like what about the fish with drugs in it?” I say.

That Simple Minds Song

Today, the only time I went outside was to go to the store.

The rain came down all morning and most of the afternoon.

On my way to the store, I saw a man who lives on the streets, huddled in a church doorway, watching people walk by. I had been kind to him in the past, but today, I took off my glasses and wiped the spatter off them as I walked by him, and I’m not sure why.  

Rainy Day Jury Duty

All of us reporting for jury duty line up on the accessibility ramp to the courthouse, while the spattering rain drips from the aluminum construction shed overhead. 

As we get to the security station, the clearly harried security guards repeat their spiels with increasing exasperation.

“Put everything in your pockets in your bags, that means wallets, phones, keys, and if you don’t have a bag, use one of these plastic buckets,” one says.

“Please do NOT put wet umbrellas in the buckets,” his coworker adds wearily.

Trauma

I lay on my bed in the dark, with my phone the only light, and watched a political rally, which is not a sentence I ever would have thought I’d write.

The current vice-president announced her nominee for vice-president in the upcoming election. And I found myself crying.

Sitting, crying at a political stump speech, just because the candidates were saying things like “we need to be better,” and “let’s take care of each other,” and I guess the last few years have been kind of traumatic.

Freedom of/from Opinion

Burberry skirt, Gucci loafers, standing in the subway - I find myself thinking about fashion as language. She wears these clothes to make a statement, to speak, as it were, through the syntax of fashion, to say something to people about herself and how she wants us to perceive us. 

So what is she saying, with her complementary (but not matching!) brands, the money she paid to procure them, the casual way in which she wears them, and what opinion do I have about these things and the statements she’s making?

I have no opinion about that.

Lucky

I finally leave the house to go to the grocery store. The storm and various projects have kept me inside all day, but I’m done with the projects and the sun’s come out, so I guess it’s time to head outside!

Dark clouds show their backs to the neighborhood as the storm rolls east, illuminated by the sun going down. Two rainbows, perfectly formed, arc across the sky, so vivid that I can see right down to the dark purple.

Happy to Help

“Can you help me brainstorm this?” Katie asks. “I need help unpacking some boxes and it’s supposed to storm today.”

“Sure!” I say. There’s a quick moment as she’s walking away where I realize I’m genuinely excited to just go cut open boxes and take things out of them, and I wonder at myself.

She’s Fine

“Okay, so before I tell you this, I want you to know, I’m fine, I’m completely okay, okay?” Katie is still wet from the rain and the storm that soaked her still grumbles and tosses the trees around outside.

“Got it.”

“I got hit by a car, but I’m FINE,” she says as my eyes widen and I start to scan her head to toe looking for any injuries, even a scrape.

Getting Ahead Of Myself

I’m excited to try this new recipe, so I dump the fake ground beef into the frying pan to start browning it.

In doing so, however, I realize I haven’t bothered to prepare any of my other ingredients, and now the clock is ticking. I’ve got about 5 minutes to slice up the tofu, get all my spices measured (and where the hell are my measuring spoons?), grate the ginger, slice the green onions, get the eggs beaten - I mean, it’s utter chaos here.

When Katie gets home, the meal is cooked, and delicious, but the kitchen could use a good hosing down.