SLOB STORY

The continued cough, a shallow echo all day for at least month. Like a shovel being driven into wet shale on a deserted building site at dawn. 

 

I would like to use the bathroom but know that there is somebody in there. Silently taking up time on pointless preparations. It makes me angry.

 

I have waited patiently for this moment.

 

For the contents of language to spill out across the counter. You scramble to pick them up and pile them back into your purse.

 

This does not alarm me, this shedding. Or it could be cells multiplying into a malignancy that breathes a shade: sobbing into the soothing darkness of a mid-winter afternoon, in Bloomsbury.

 

Somewhere you don’t belong. Picking up a pamphlet.

 

Off we go and away with consciousness.

The flesh that binds us to the bare bones of reality. 

 

Is all there is; 

 

all there ever will be.