clear

In the summer I throw things in the garbage.  I eat blackberries and I clean my drawers.  I scrub floors I sweep I vaccuum I organize.  And I eat berries, a lot of berries, because berries help me clean things.  I found the program from Lison's funeral with CC's poem on the back.  I tried to throw it away but could not quite.  But threw away all the empty shampoo bottles, the little vials and wrappers and tubes that somehow collect.  How can one person use this many products?  Only half of each one before moving on to another.  I threw them away, I threw them all away, scrubbed the counters, folded the clothes into pretend file folders standing upright so I could see each one waiting to be worn.

I watched my hands cut avocados, I watched my hands turn into my mother's hands.  The way she peels an avocado makes me angry, as if she means to make me angry, as if she wants avocado pulp under her nails.  As if there isn't a better way to do it.  She knows there is a better way to do it because we have told her; she is being perverse.  I cut the first one her way, I cut the second one my way.  They both tasted the same.  I wonder whether I admire that kind of stubbornness, if I like it in myself when I catch it.  I wonder if she reflects upon these things as I do when she cuts avocados.

Tomorrow Shawn will be home.  He has been summoned to head office to solve Problems, and so he has solved them, while I have eaten berries and trimmed trees and thrown a lot of things in the garbage. I eat better when he is away.  I clean more.  Because I miss him, and I have grown dependant, I must do more with myself to compensate for his absence.  I went to yoga, I walked the dogs.  I collapsed the cardboard boxes and made them all so flat.


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