Under circumstances

I have gone mad. Clearly. Deeply. There are no controls to this. No head room. But there are fans and snoring dogs. 

How many sanitizing washes are in the life of a dishwashing machine? 

​When met with disorder. Met with relentlessness. When both join up and a kitchen rodent is involved, reason, judgement, sacredness turns and leaves the house. 

No, I take that back, common sense is thrown out with the bath towel and the pasta roller. 

I don’t say this out loud but I say innumerable times, why is this happening to me? 

I’ve left out of this confessional the pox I put on someone else’s house. 

A politician. You wouldn’t think, in this case, the pox would boomerang. 

And this is how far I’ve landed from the obvious. A rainy winter after a 5-year drought. A faulty cat door (no cat lives here now, another story) and an apparent ingress. 

I don’t co-exist with this species. I am not a turd-in-my-silverware-drawer kind of human. I don’t forgive tiny bite marks in heirloom multi-colored plum tomatoes. 

Madness is individual. Dripping water does not seem torture. I’ve had a native black tarantula fall on to my head without becoming prey to tarantism. 

This is where frantic, frenzied, ferocious has the makings of tattoo. Where the live trap solicits a tee-hee, haw-haw, cackle. Where I stalk the reaper and the answer is me.

Many times, I have had a hummingbird fly in. Sample several rooms, go all the way to the apex. Gentle, unflappable, composed. 

I assist, waving a red dish towel beyond the open door.


Published in Everything reaches out to everything else