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stoneware
I take off my boot and it slices my leg open like a broken beer bottle. I don't feel the cut, just the wound opening up. I still have a scar on my arm from when a broken beer bottle sliced me open at work. I see why they use them in bar fights. You could easily kill someone. The dishes pile up in the sink. Laundry on the table. It seems every day I wake up, I clean up after the day before. Hand-washing a mountain of dishes. The same pans again and again. Running up and down stairs into the basement to switch loads, coming back up, feeling like I am crawling out of a grave. Scrubbing stains that never go away. Then it's suddenly dinnertime. And then I'm tired and the day is over. Keeping house is a full time job. Somehow I used to be able to get my chores done in an hour or so, then have the rest of day to do my arts. Now I have nothing but time, but no inspiration. And for some reason, it takes me half the day just to get things comfortable to live with. I try not to be hard on myself, but it never works. I think I have ADHD. I think I have liver disease. I think old age is going to be hell. The snow that fell yesterday is brown. Chemicals and dust from West Texas combining with a heavy dose of paranoia. It crumbles like Styrofoam in your hands. I refuse to shovel the sidewalk. It will melt off in two days. New windows finally installed, but he still coughs and sputters and complains incessantly of the poisons in the world. I knew this would happen. There's no hope of things ever getting better. I think about getting a PT job at a downtown shop this summer just so I am not home. Bring in a handful of coins each day in exchange for my freedom. Why and What For? Minimum wage slave. I shutter to think my inspiration is running dry, has been dry for a decade. That drinking isn't the cause of my lethargy and sadness, that it is the response to them. No support network at all. Having to be the strongest person in the world isn't within my capabilities, apparently. Everything is narrowing to a pinprick of light at the end of a tunnel that doesn't really exist, anyway. I watch a documentary on Bonnie and Clyde. Watch old men talk about being in a search party in the Iowa woods, looking for the dead bodies of the fugitives but stumbling upon them, still alive. I notice that all that lovely hoarder pottery from Canada on auction is too expensive, so I fulfill my urge to own new pretty things by spending a quarter of their asking price on signed stoneware off eBay. Cups and bowls and dishes are meant to be used, not locked away behind a glass cabinet. Yes, they will eventually break. Yes, they will need to be carefully scrubbed every single day until that happens. I guess I'm used to cleaning endlessly until broken. No one should ever have to feel this way.
2:57 PM - Saturday, Apr. 13, 2019
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