don't you ever write poetry?

It rained last night. It was a welcome break from the sweltering, nearly immobilizing heat we've been having. On my way home, lightning arced back and forth across the sky and the rhythm of my windshield wipers gave music to the British lady delivering news over my radio. I was going to meet my best friend at a bar, a sort of broken down place in the broken down part of town. My favorite kind of place; it's the kind where you have drink after drink and take polaroids that you'll look at again years from now and feel a dull nostalgic longing for the good ol' times.

I parked in the sparsely-lit gravel parking lot, treacherous and uneven from years of neglect and full of puddles with depths indiscernible, and made my way to the unadorned side door to the bar. I could already smell the smoke, and there was a phantom taste of whiskey already on my tongue. Thoughts of seeing my friend, who has moved away to another city, rolled around in my brain but were suddenly interrupted.

"Don't you ever write poetry?"

Startled, I turned to search for the source of the distraction.

"Do you have a pen?" She was shorter than me, thin and dry as a stalk of wheat in a drought. Dark circles framed her eyes, her voice had a desperate and unsettling edge. I didn't have a pen, I knew that. I told her. "You have that big purse, and you don't even have a pen?" She indicated the large and beaten-up messenger bag that I always keep with me. Making a cursory exploration of the front pocket, I turned up with nothing, as expected. "I really don't, sorry..." I kept walking toward the door of the bar, wishing that I hadn't left the pen on my keyboard at work.

"Doesn't anyone write poetry any more?" More quietly, almost an inward remark, she walked on. I wish I'd had a pen, I haven't read any poetry in a while.

it's not permanent

Driving north on the highway to work early in the morning, I'm just one little cell in an artery suffering from some serious cholesterol buildup. We're all hustling past each other to deliver our oxygen all over this city, exiting the highway off into lesser arteries and turning off into capillaries until we reach our destinations, then traveling small paths on foot until we're spent and weary.

The lady on the news with the smooth voice drones on about the already mounting temperature. We're under a "heat advisory" through the end of this week. I'm trying to stay awake, trying not to think how I tossed and turned last night and hardly slept, hardly got a refill of the oxygen I need to carry out my tasks. A red truck that's seen kinder times passes me on the right. I must be going too slow. On the side of the truck, in handwritten letters on what must be a large white magnet, the phrase "don't take life so serious, it's not permanent" is scrawled in bubbly green and black marker. The man driving the truck has a cowboy hat on his head and a cigarette in his hand, and as the truck passes I can feel the bass of whatever he's singing along to.

At the end of the day, used up and tired and worrying about the next day already while I traveled back up the vein, was when I remembered the cowboy's hand-crafted message. I smiled.

very small leaves

I like my eggs cooked over-easy, but I don't cook them that way. I always end up making scrambled eggs. Whether this is because I enjoy watching the yolk spill out from its membrane and combine with the whites or because I am a little afraid to try cooking something new, I'm not sure. They always end up scrambled.

Three is more than enough. I stood at the stove, barefoot and in my pajamas, gently cracking open the shells on the side of a dish. Sometimes the sound the shell makes when it finally gives makes me feel a little sad inside, the wet crunch and crack as the sides are separated and the contents slip out of their fragile home and into the bowl. Some of the shell always ends up in there and I have to stick my finger in to chase it up the side - it never seems to work with the fork, always slipping back away from the instrument.

One left to go. It felt heavy in my hand. I tapped it on the bowl and started to peel it apart, and small speckles of black fell on top of the eggs waiting in the dish. You never expect that when you're getting ready to make some scrambled eggs. I tried to keep the egg together and brought it close to my face. It was dirt. Just dirt there, in the egg, filling the white abscess of shell.

So I watered it. I put it in the sun near my desk. I didn't expect anything at all.