Status Quo

I kissed his name where he wrote it for me on in the back of my notebook. It tasted like paper and graphite and I knew I needed to be home. The radio's crackly and the water's bitter. The sky's gray, the air's cold. Lying and sobbing in boredom can't do for long. I was sick for so long I hardly believed I'd be well.

I used to pretend the grandest things to get me through miserable weeks in the country. My bed was a bunk in a ship that was sailing somewhere I dearly wanted to go. I was trapped in a castle's furthest tower, communicating by pigeon through the window. This time it couldn't work. I was too ill, too hungry, too tired. The wind was howling too hard to believe I was going anywhere. Or perhaps I had simply spent the week before too cheery to ever pretend.


So picture the place in front of the the hardware store where the Amish tie their carriages, with Donald Trump strung up next to it, plastic half-circles fluttering in his suit. The field with the winding creek and the pair of mares, full of rusted crap and a sunken old teal car. The railroad museum, honoring the reason for the town's birth, and silently questioning the reason for its continuing existance. The front yard of the old-fashioned white house, sloping down to the narrow sidewalk, all mud and tufts of brown grass, choked with pinwheels, garden balls, and flamingos.

I'm so happy to be back. He's right, I am wasting my life here. But I have a door to shut and lights to turn out. I have a whole day's worth of things to do.

There's a window of time, you're in the nick of it
You look at the view and you're sick of it
You get the urge to throw a brick in it
Go ahead now
- Brendan Benson, "Spit It Out"