Ordinary Day
It’s always the regular days
the ones we don’t recall
the ones that go on and on
without anything at all much going on.
It’s the everyday conversations,
the ones we cannot say again
or even know what we said,
in which we find who we really are.
The paper is delivered
and the flag is lowered to half staff.
Someone died, and it is a normal day
not unlike all the other days.
It is tomorrow or is it today?
What’s the difference anyway?
You will find me sitting on a chair
or breathing unquestionably polluted air.
I stopped drinking my morning coffee
so we can’t talk about that,
and what reasons it brought to
this table that I sit on every day.
I am a hostage, I am a prisoner
to the daily rituals...
Brush your teeth, close the door
take off your clothes, get wet.
Whether it is a shower or another hour
we are all standing in queue
for the next available moment
to do the next thing that has to be done.
I fold the laundry and take out the trash,
I don’t think about my name backwards.
Or if I would be the same person
if you could not pronounce me.
I have no time for idle thoughts
I must clean the dishes, vacuum the room.
Shut off the lights, open the blinds,
make tea and add a little milk.
I must hear the weather,
feed the cat. Nothing inspires me
about the repetition of nothingness
that I now affectionately call my life.
Sometimes I wish I could bark like a dog
and make it understood that I was not born
to tie my shoes and zip up my pants.
I want to rip out my hair instead of brushing it.
Turn off the T.V, make the bed.
Pour a glass of water, wipe the counter.
Don’t sing unless you know all the words.
Don’t walk backwards, you may hit your head.
Some days between getting the mail
and waving at the neighbor
I remember your name, backwards.
I should have said we are all upside down.
But it is between the sentences,
at the pauses, that I see the small
light coming from the bottom of the kitchen door.
And it spreads through the room making me a shadow.
As I bend down to pick up a crumb I dropped on the
floor from the bread I was cutting, I feel the heat.
And I know, and I know, that I am not a robot,
I am a wave that conducts light.
Or maybe like electrons, I am both a wave and a particle
and you cannot ever be sure of my exact location.
But I am moving really fast around the nucleus.
I am electricity, even when I am doing nothing at all, every day.
nina