Sonatine of 23

4/4 time - Andante

Bread

1. I imagine the clock will inform me that it is morning. I imagine the sky outside the window will be just-dark. Beginning to think about getting light. I imagine this hill is shivering into Awake. I imagine

2. The clock informs me that it is two-thirty. The sky is all-dark. The hill is still sleeping its old-mountain sleep. I roll over on the bed and close my eyes. It is not morning it is not morning it is not morning

3. Awake awake awake awake it is not night, either. I will bird-sound into existence. The floor is cold. The kitchen is dark. Do I know where the light switch is? And where the flour, and where the yeast, and where the mixing bowl

4. It is close to noon by the time I find yeast. A quarter turn of the day, waiting to begin. I tell it to the dough. Press that quarter turn into it. It won't be ready before dark. Another quarter turn

Words

1. I read the instructions. I do. I promise.

2. I think they have changed in the night. The pages I have written do not fit the requirements.

3. The trouble with a computer is that you cannot ball up a page of words that do not fit and throw them in frustration in the general direction of the waste-paper basket. Kobe

4. I am terrified of the blank page I am terrified of the blank page I am terrified

Waiting

1. The shower will not heat up. The water on the stove will not boil. I wash my hair in the sink and cook my noodles in the microwave. I am tired of waiting.

2. In a moment of supposed clarity I realize that I might, in fact, be qualified. I apply. I pore over the words. Get them just right just right- just write. Press send. Wait

3. Three time-zones away my mother is still sleeping. I want to call I want to call I want to call. What time is it? How much longer? Are we there yet are we there yet are we there

4. Somewhere along the line they said that just wanting to be okay was enough. Well? I am waiting. I want to be okay. No, I want to be happy. I'm waiting for that to be enough.

Friends

1. We change the name of the group chat. It's been three years. Now my screen lights up. New message in People Who Don't Suck. I miss you I miss you I miss you all

2. I don't do drugs. At least not that often. But the thing is, I can't sleep. The thing is, I sleep too much. The thing is, I'm entirely built out of contradictions and I'm not doing nearly enough with my life to be this tired. The thing is, I'm twenty-three

3. What do people do with their lives if they aren't working every moment? If they aren't being graded? Booze. Sex. Garage bands. I take a swig from my bottle of grapefruit seltzer with the generalized malaise of a washed-up thirty-something in a bar after work. Then, because there's no one else around, I call my mom.

4. I am happiest when we sit at our computers for four hours on a Sunday and play videogames and pretend that we know exactly where to find each other. I don't miss being graded. But I miss you

Roses

1. Will you come with me to the Spring Flower Show this year?

2. All of us are seed pods; we are blown away from here.

3. Can we gather up the dandelion, back into a flower?

4. Build our castle in a garden. Blast our music from the tower.

3/4 time - Moderato

Routine

1. Every time I do laundry I re-learn the process. This is the reason, I think, that I cannot learn new things. I am too busy re-learning old ones. Ninety-nine percent of RAM in use. Storage space not available.

2. Every time I brush my teeth I think about the picture book from the dentist's office when I was three years old. Anthropomorphized toothbrush. Anthropomorphized cavity. And wonder why I can't sleep at night

3. Every time I roll my shoulder back it plays a song. Like a music box. Ever-degrading. And I think about my friend with perfect pitch and wonder what he would transcribe when I get up in the morning and stretch.

Numerals

1. The scratched-up Frank Sinatra Christmas CD I bought at the flea market a year and a half ago. And that song of mine, in three-quarter time... I count. It isn't. Not even close. Not even a 6/8. But then again, it's hard to tell with crooners.

2. How many slices are in a pack of sliced cheese? What's the unit price? in slices, not ounces. Seriously, no one cares about ounces. How many sandwiches can I make with this? This is the information the people want.

3. Fourteen slats on the underside of the bed frame. I count three times. It isn't OCD, it's boredom. I'm in the prime of my life, don'tcha know. We'll come back to that. Ten fingers, ten toes, fourteen slats, thirteen socks. Wait.

Lies

1. I am writing a novel, I say. You can read it, but not until it's finished. What I mean, of course, is that I think of a story when my eyes won't stay open but my brain won't sleep. And delight in this paradox: of course you can read it! when it is finished. I promise. But you will never read it. Because I will never let you. Because I don't finish writing things.

2. I'm totally a people-person. A real team-player. It recharges me to uplift other people. Please give me a job please give me a job please give me a job

3. I used to tell people that when I grew up I wanted to be a Rockette. Just to shut them up. The problem was, they believed me. Are you still dancing? Oh, yes. Well, sort of. Sometimes. Occasionally. I mean, when I can. It's been a while.

Isolation

1. It's a different kind of low to run out of tampons. To push the boundary on Toxic Shock Syndrome territory just to not have to leave the house. Fine. Fine. I'm out of allergy meds, too. I'll go down to the pharmacy. As soon as I take a shower. As soon as I get dressed. As soon as I

2. I give up and order grocery delivery instead. The driver sends me updates. I find myself wishing we were friends. How does anyone have friends they didn't meet in school?

3. Who am I going to ask for a tampon if I run out in the middle of the day? Who am I going to bring the extra bread to? Who am I going to drive home from the bar because they've had a few drinks but I'm sober, always sober... Who am I going to sing karaoke with and who am I going to knit a hat for and who is going to pick me up from the mechanic or the hospital or the street corner in the middle of the night?

Unobservation

1. I watch the kittens wrestle and I watch the wind bend the tree branches and I watch the words appear on the screen and I watch the clock and I watch the phone and I watch the pot on the stove

2. Poets float in and out of my head. I imagine the big yellow road sign: FOG AREA. I imagine it painted on my forehead. I imagine the poets driving through my brain-fog at night, on their way home from a shit job with shit pay. Then I imagine the ground to be a giant defogger.

3. I remember going to a coffee shop to write. I remember the barista-- tall, blonde, blue-eyed-- asking what I was writing. Leaning against the wall when he brought me my tea. Who are your favorite writers? your inspiration? - Harper Lee, Sylvia Plath, S.E. Hinton, David Grossman... I remember going on. Specifying. This one for voice and this one for worldbuilding and this one for cultural impact. I remember his reply - nice, nice. I'm more of a Hemmingway-McCarthy kind of guy myself. I remember laughing. This is what he thinks will be attractive to me. Drinking my tea and gossiping into my notebook.

4/4 - Allegro Moderato

Sweet

1. The Bell City Diner has plastic-jeweled chandeliers and twinkling red LED cherry trees. The menus are yellow and pink and advertise glitter sangria. If I was drinking I would order it, to find out whether it actually glitters. I'm half-tempted to order it anyway. Not to drink, just to see.

2. What do you do for a living? I'm a dancer. No. I'm in childcare? No. Well, really, I mostly sit in coffee shops and diners and hit backspace backspace backspace backspace-- Sweetheart, that won't pay the rent.

3. I hate when strangers call me sweetheart. Who do you think you are? Who do you think I am? Who am I to you? The waitress at Bell City calls me Honey and brings me a strawberry milkshake the size of my head, drenched in sprinkles, with a candy-striped straw and gummy worms on the plate. I imagine she sees me as I am. Landlords, airport security, middle-aged customers at the bakery where I worked the last time I made a living wage-- it's a battlefield. Which of us is the joke? But the ladies at the diner, they're in on it with me. It's Schroedinger's joke. It both is and isn't funny, right up until rent is due.

4. Being sweet never paid the rent, either.

Patriot

1. Don't I feel American! the flag blows against the cliched blue outside the arching window behind me. I see the reflection in the screen of my laptop. Dark red booths, catty waitresses, eight kinds of beer on tap. The underlying certainty of unspoken racism. A stack of job applications on the counter.

2. I try to follow the news. The trouble is, I can't read anymore, and the voices of the reporters on NPR bother me, and really, what's the point in knowing what I can't change? Isn't it enough that I can't seem to change my own life? Upward mobility my ass.

3. All over the country, wells run dry. Somewhere in every state, people are turning twenty-three. Looking longingly forward. Looking longingly backward. Starting up mountains and turning around. And around. And around

4. How far back do I go before I find Happy? Kindergarten, maybe. But I always hated standing for the pledge of allegiance. One nation, under our corporate overlords-- that's not right, is it? I haven't said it in a while.

Box

1. Mountain after mountain after mountain. They all turn out to be the wrong one. I walk backward down the other side. Never gonna stop looking at the top. Even when it's hidden in the clouds

2. The way that you spin around and around and around when you don't know what to do or where to go and home is not an option

3. So I guess I'm a dancer. I guess I'm a sweetheart ballerina on a music box and nevermind the fact I'll never look like one, it's all relative and I certainly don't look like a carpenter. Round and around and around

4. And when does a hill become a mountain, anyway? When does a doll become a friend? When do a bunch of words on a page become a poem?

Tercet

1. Shiny white tile walls and

shiny black painted doors;

all the light that has nowhere else to go

2. I bounce and you bounce and

I conjugate our bouncing and

I'm sorry, love, for all the waiting

3. There is a pattern to primes and lives

but the prime of my life doesn't

make much sense at all

4. Nervous hands and feet. Twist

and twine and don't worry, I'll

worry enough for us both

Coda

1. Today I am denim on denim and boots that are covered in so much clay dust that they almost pass as work boots. I think I almost pass as someone with a life. The sky is blue and it's warm for February and I am full of red sugar sprinkles and maybes

2. If it was a tango we would finish with a dramatic dip. It's not a tango and I'd rather keep my feet under me

3. What music would I listen to if I was a long-haul trucker? Van Morrison and an endless string of cigarette commercials. '80s tracks that fade out on a repeat of the chorus as I turn the engine off

4. What a story! I'm not an optimist, but I think I might be looking up. Up at the sky. Up at the birds. Up, because even if I'm twenty-three I'm alive! alive! alive! And my hands fall to my sides. I give up the symphony and go back to bed.