Funny, thinking back, the restaurant– hell, the industry, those incessant phone calls in the midst of rush, my snaking past corners with three plates of hummus and shawarma in aluminum, warm from the kitchen, only to waste in a stranger’s presence, scraps on porcelain I’d bus, then zigzag through the floorplan of tables. Funny, thinking now, how little has changed– insecure in economics, I’ve jumped the lilypads of job after job, the backbreaking work of conforming, of each return home with something new to say but I’ve said it, I’ve said my best, my cap- stone theses shredded in California, back when full of possibility– I desire a bowl of time loops. Cereal in my milk. I didn’t even use silverware in college, a joke inside a riddle presented as a gift I constantly unwrap, umbrellas of green folding into myself in the rain, suffocating, blinding, this pirouette of place, this unfixable sedan screaming off the shoulder of the highway, smoke signals ablaze and late for work. |