Now

After the metal band, the rubber band

I absolve the sky. It is subject to forces unseen. Then I absolve my boss. He is subject to hubris and get smart quick schemes. I absolve myself, but only just in case. I do not think I have done anything wrong. If you think I have then I absolve you too.

Absolution feels like floating on your back in a lake the same temperature as the air. Absolution looks like when you peer out of a very high window and see that the world was a diorama all along. When we are absolved we will be like leaves borne on the blue backs of rivers to the sea.

Elsewhere, an airplane is full of baby airplanes hovering in their seats. In front of me, a man reads a pornographic novel about a priest and then a serious novel about female friendship.

Out the window, the baby clouds.

When you start remembering

If only rain saved time for street cleaners, what a world that would be.

I am crocheting everything that has happened so far. 5 pm to 9 am I’m soaking my swollen hands in bath salts and 9 am to 5 pm I’m working on the crochet version of everything that has happened so far. You might walk in and point at the crochet version of you at age 20. “Is that me?” you might ask, and I’d say “so far.” And then you might pull out a pack of sticky back googly eyes and start sticking them on everything that’s happened so far (the crochet versions). And it will go on like this, possibly forever but at least for tonight.

In another version of tonight we do paintings. Christmas lights explode bulb by socket. We live in my uncle Art who has four blank walls. We are evicted in short order. Only cellists allowed here anymore. The walls we leave are strung with tissue ghost viscera.

Tonight I miss you a vacant lot. Most of all after moonbathing when our shadows blistered and we peeled them off each other like snake skins. The oyster shell moon is no help and I say so. Also wrinkly: our clothes on the shore.

In my favorite tonight of all I am designing a machine that makes the green flash audible. I am patenting a mechanism that will make sex with your spouse like it was in the beginning. In between inventions I pull the legs off spiders and rubber cement them to the bodies of other spiders to make super spiders. The super spiders juggle fly heads and spin gossamer tights for their lady loves. When the spiders threaten to threaten you I kill them.

A cicada crawls from the husk in my knee and starts screaming. You oblige; I get jealous. Who will wake in the silk city tomorrow?

_________

Ruby Rorty writes from the shallows of the Great Lakes.