Jubilee

by Eleanor Scott

what does it look like to you, our wasted year? i have watched two springs stretch their legs from my window. my indoor summer was puzzles, was amsterdam in pieces, seeing places i once touched in shreds and fitting the pictures back together for some grasp at control. now i wish for sunlit sadness, when at least the world i gazed at was green, button stuck on pause. simple fix. dig a butter knife in around the edges, jiggle ‘til it pops back into place. i waited patiently, or just about. now free-fall tells me a finger slipped somewhere: eject.

winter smoothed away all my best edges, left me dumb. dull, endless dark, no holiday, no valentine - the season is a parasite, a germ, some towering mass i can give no correct metaphor what absorbs everything it touches, scoops light and flower and me into its maw like a whale swallowing up krill? what curses its prey with its own affliction, tars it with matching shadows? what villain, what black midas?

i can’t remember if it’s always this bad. i can’t remember much at all. do you feel shrunken and pale like me? do you feel anything? my heart beats very slowly now. my energy all goes to daydreams, wistful, viridian thoughts, barcelona or a crossword. a bear cave. forsythia. the mercy of the end.