They Say It Is Whatever You Make of It
What I am doing is easy to relay.
Who I am is not.
I’m sitting atop my bed, leaning
back against the back wall of my
tiny coffin-sized apartment. Only
it’s not a hot-box today. It’s cool,
lovely, and with my door open just
a bit, I feel the breeze against my
back. It whooshes over and under
the back flap of my left ear and surely
wends its way out the door, across the
hall and into my neighbor’s tiny room.
He’s playing a video game. It’s always
loud. I think he’s moved on from the
one in which he is racing cross-country
in a semi. No rumbling. No rough talk.
Instead I hear occasional instructions
(vague, indecipherable, but nevertheless
loud) of a spritely girl voice. She sounds
like Sakura from Naruto. Anyway, what
I’m doing. Is reading a book a purchased
(I do this when I can, which for a while
was a mournfully rare occurrence) on eBay.
It is by a friend. It’s the second time I
purchased it. (It wasn’t one I already
owned, one of the many lost when I
was 50, that old story, but) I bought a
copy from Amazon, one of those rare
occurrences because I was able to do so.
Apparently, shortly after it arrived, it was
either misplaced or stolen, something
that happens often down at the front
desk, where the mail comes in and
waits for me. Anyway, it is a book
from a friend, the second purchase of
said book. It is inscribed to someone
that isn’t me, this book written by a
friend, purchased twice. And I am
leaning back against the cool back
wall of my apartment reading it.
And it is good. Page after page of it,
I read, thinking of my friend, reveling
in its humor, the poignance of each piece.
