justwrite 28 october

every time I turn the corner smile and good evening having left my lips the whitefrosted door opens and I am stepping into a cardboard box my hand reaches out for the expected cellophane protecting what must be honeynut cheerios deep down reaching and I don’t know which came first if I ever turned this corner with an open cereal box in hand and set that trigger was it just the smell that send me in search of the cardboard wholesomeness of honeynut cheerios and how much time is eaten up by food the creating the preparing the consuming the cleaningup after and the shopping the recipe looking the considering the craving could we be saving some of this for something else like aerobics or do we go to aerobics because of how much time we’ve already spent on food there are causes and there are effects but if one neglected to shuffle the expected cards into the most elementary of orders a series of disorders would no doubt be in evidence we are searchers for reasons and avoiders of blame we easily claim escape when possible and even when implausible we suggest some sideways tales to avail ourselves of blameless sleep those soft white sheep keep jumping while we’re lumping that weight hefting it even toward some other season or unfortunate being in the way we can’t play ourselves in every scene and say what we mean as naturally as we’d like but we easily mic up others and hand them scripts where they bite their lips and hem and haw and apologize for all they’ve done to us and make a fuss about how to fix it and hope we can forgive it while we lean back in the director’s chair and play it cool suggesting another take or two to fix a mistake or two we thought we heard absurdly believing this exercise relieves us of the need to look within keeping the mirror clear over there while we stare down the real causes those dependent clauses without which we could be our own sentences but still we fear to carry them out ourselves salvaging space before punctuation