Sitting Situations

You mustn’t show weakness and you’ve got to have a certain shade about you. But sometimes I feel like the thin led of a mechanical pencil that breaks when sitting, writing a letter to the one you love Rather than just another love letter. You mustn’t show weakness and you’ve got to make a list. While sitting, think of all the things you can load in a car without any people. This is the way things stand now: If I pull out the stopper after pampering myself in the bath, I’m afraid that all of the city, and with it the whole world, will drain out into the huge darkness. I’m stranded on some ocean-locked island No strength to swim yet, so I must work and build muscle. In the daytime I lay traps for my memories and at night I wait while sitting in the Hawaiian palm trees of my sheets, turning curse into blessing and blessing into curse. And don’t ever show weakness. Sometimes I come crashing down inside myself without anyone noticing. I’m like an ambulance on two legs, hauling the patient sitting inside me to the emergency room with the wailing of cry of a siren, and people think it’s ordinary speech.