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Lunar Plateaus
"I would get so high that I couldn’t breathe. My mind is so intent on making others
comfortable, on guessing where the comfort level is in others, that I, at times, tend to fry up.
This about one of those times. I was sitting by myself, as I am now, and was leaning over to
grab a strawberry, fresh Manoa strawberries, from the island, and ready for our mouths,
when it suddenly dawned on me that I could not remember my last content moment.
Preceding the strawberry was a week’s worth of carnage. An emotional tackle box getting
kicked down the street. And I wasn’t the tackle box. I wasn’t even the guy (or girl [lady for
that matter]) kicking the tackle box. I was the one watching. I was the one watching the guy
or girl or lady kicking the emotional tackle box down the street all week. And I wasn’t just
watching. I was shouting and moving, and kicking and I felt like the tackle box most of the
time.
In the store with my brother buying groceries swimming along aisles crunched together
brimming and bending with massive swelling food I get spun up and around again. Running
and dodging at the great modern bazaar. Here I am tangled in energy with the potential
torpedo-speed of diverting into any singular focus, cause, emotion, empathy, wonder, or
pity. So I walk with trembling fingers through the bardos.
Groceries are like an animal that eats you more than you eat it…”
The six eyes glared at each other. Finally one of the two heads underneath the giant upside-
down light bulb exclaimed: “Then what?”
“The transmission ends.”
She waves the document she was reading in the dead, extra-terrestrial air. She loses grip
with it as the ancient rag falls from her like a frightened dove feather if feathers could
be frightened. The other two space-suited light bulb heads chase after it. The Lady In
Command walks to the end of the lunar plateau and dreams, ‘What if I was a towel?’
Copyright ©
Matt Caliri
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