slipped the seams of it
the night mirror reflecting
stars across her back
--
It was a good day not too long ago. I got bookshelves. I assembled them. I came to the conclusion that Swedish furniture designers have the world's strongest hands. Overdevelopped palms that kill you with a handshake.
Also, it looks like I will have a job for several months starting December 1st. It's hard to explain the magnitude of my relief, even in terms of the magnitude of my debt. Consider, for example, how many times I mentioned my failure to find a job in this journal, over the last three months: 0. A testament to the anxiety involved.
It's like having a twenty-pound coconut growing out of your forehead. First, you buy the coconut a hat, and pretend its a fashion statement. Then, as desperation looms, you pretend the coconut has disappeared. You hope that if you don't mention it, nobody will notice. Eventually you start avoiding mirrors. Speak only to strangers. Leave the house only to buy toilet paper. In the cocoon of your bed, where you once sought comfort, the coconut soon becomes overwhelming, the sickly sweet smell of it. The milk curdling. Every time you turn your head, you hear the ocean. Soon, you are dreaming that you are living inside the coconut, and that it is not attached to your head at all but a sort of universal constant, governing the tides and the extremities of human loneliness.
Then one day somebody comes over and cuts the coconut right off.
There's something about fruit these days. Extended metaphors waiting to happen, every time I browse for produce.