We're getting to be that age, my neighbor told me.
She told me this while I had just dragged 50 million pound shitfilled trashcans out to the curb and shut the gate so she stood outside the gate with the fat part of the top of the gate exactly crossing across her eyes so I in fact was just talking to an eyeless neighbor.
I guess people are sick or dying, she was trying to say, and I guess this happens at our age. But I thought sick and dying is kind of a universal thing or maybe it has better distribution maybe it's managed by Sony Pictures.
I looked at the parts of her face that I could see and her closed toed shoes even though it was August and the temperature of Mercury and only 9 am. Who wears closed toes shoes in the summer man. Also who wears closed shoes ever we live in California. That's why our brothers fought the revolutionary war, I'm pretty sure. Our rights to any crazy footwear at any season.
She kept talking even though the story she was telling was a better 30 second ad. I started to feel the heat from dragging those trashcans, better to just keep going and not stop when heavy lifting, then you get back inside before you realize your body is signaling uhheyyy, we're teetering here. As she talked about our other mean neighbor being in the hospital I started feeling sick and weak. Not because of the mean neighbor, that neighbor is one of the most awful people I've ever met. When I heard she had sepsis and was maybe dying a few days ago I was like you know what? good But out in this heat with the sun jabbing a busted burnt hot dog finger directly into my sweatglands I felt myself faltering.
that sun at full blast is uninspiring
She finally stopped talking after I found a pause long enough to start backing away politely. I felt woozy so I climbed back into my mom's cool secret den of dementia into the bed near hers and lay back down just for a minute in the shade of indoors. Who gets back in bed is this a thing
it's so nice
I hold my phone so I have a friend with me and slowly my body starts to right itself the way it has my whole life so far. Emergency vehicles dispatched to all parts and tiny workers repair whatever's struggling in there. Really it's just heat, exertion and eyeless neighbors talking about mean neighbors dying in hospitals. She coulda been talking about horse supplements, it was all just too much. Don't people know I am here to observe and dispatch my knowledge in this little computer box, it is too much to be conversational also and the faking compassion is also a heavy burden apparently.
I wish I could have said look. That neighbor when the ball went over the fence and the kids were little and dewy eyed we would go over to her house and tentatively knock and say ohhh our ball I'm sorry and she would snap if it comes over again I'm KEEPING IT! like a no-lie, witch. And her equally mean sister when I was walking behind my horse training it she yelled I hope you get kicked in the head!
Both instances we looked up at these sisters with big confused eyes you hope what, now?
I had the most beautiful, kind, serene children. And these witches, they shoveled fury. Into a furnace we never even once lit for any reason.
They just liked shoveling, man.
I say be careful, nurses, at that hospital. You are handling the devil. Also can we tear down your house, I need an arena right there. You're gonna be fine, basking by the hot lava lake in your natural habitat, hell.
I started to feel better and require bacon. So I got back up from bedded bliss and shuffled back out through the whiteblurred sun to the fan-laden kitchen where B worked quietly in Emma's room/now his office.
How ya doin, he called out.
I've had some thoughts, I said.
