BB Grey–musings

*****

a smear of days. a smear of light on the wall. the clock eats its own tail.

got a number. a bad number. a cancer full of ghosts. google said: dead man. maybe. i thought: fine. i’ll just leak out quiet. didn’t tell nobody. told everybody. my boy’s voice on the phone. a crack in the world.

insurance says: wait. so you wait. you wait in the blur.

they stick you. they scan you. they say: cholesterol. they say: colon test in a box. they say: sleep study. they don’t say: why you wake up tired of being you.

asked for the number again. the bad number. today. tomorrow i’ll know. or i won’t.

adopting a dog. shelter says: diabolical. they used the word. diabolical. i’m bringing a devil home. seems right.

work. pushing a wet noodle up a hill. feeling flat. went in for the flatness. they found the first domino. now they’re all falling slow.

market’s a crooked smile. trump’s back with games. my money’s got the shakes. i trade. i lose a little. i lose a little different. it’s a job.

the words are gone. the page is a white wall. i got nothing to sign my name to.

Her. a space where a person was. she says: my cat died. she says: i’m holding myself together. what’s she been holding for six years? air. she yells. i hear the air move. that’s something.

asked her: are we? she says: yes. why? i said: feels like no. the silence after that. a deep, well-kept hole.

doing my taxes. numbers in a row. if i finish, i’m current until october. a kind of clean. i’d rather be dirty. i’d rather be working.

everything’s a little off. like a painting hung crooked. you straighten it. it’s still the same painting.

so you do the things. the things you put off. the mail-in test. the devil dog. the waiting. you do them because the blur needs a shape. even if the shape’s just a hole.

you succumb to the ordinary. it’s the only thing that’s real. the blur is real. the hole in the resolve is real.

the rest is just a bad number, waiting to be wrong.