There is a monster who only comes to me when I’m alone. It creeps up behind me and sits on my shoulder to ask a simple question.
“What’s he doing?”
This monster prods me, he pokes me in the shoulder, kicks my ear.
“I bet he’s having fun. His life is probably so much better now—without you.”
The monster is green. A dark forest green with rugged, tough skin, which has pokey bits that prick you when you try to pick it up to rid yourself of it. It starts out tiny, about the size of a mouse, but it grows.
It grows with every question I answer, every question I add to the pile myself, always promising to make this one its last question, last prod. It grows and grows until it takes up my entire living room, and while before, it was spacious, with enough room to do my yoga, I can now no longer breath. The space this monster takes up is suffocating me.
And it simply sits there. It sits there and breaths.
And pricks with its pokey bits. But now, I can’t pick it up. I can only sit, breathing. But only shallow enough so I don’t hit a pokey bit.
Sometimes tears shrink the the monster. Sometimes I have to push my way past the pokey bits, bleeding, to maneuver my way out of the now too-small living room and do something. Anything. Groceries at 3AM. Landry. Impromptu sunset hike. NPR podcast. Call someone, pretending I’m not still being poked. I’ve even seen my cat defeat the monster by rolling on her back requesting a belly rub.
And sometimes the monster shrinks. And sometimes it stays in my living room.
Fall 2017
Petrichor 