Tablecloth

According to myth, when the astronauts landed, the moon rang like a bell. I’d probably live on the moon except I think I’d miss the moonlight, driving my rover from crater to crater in earthshine. A reasonable excuse to avoid visiting hours at assisted living. In space, no one can hear you lying to your mom. Can’t make it, Mom. It’s a really long schlep. A day room and a visitor’s pass. The burden and its domestic infrastructure. The coffee’s weak and the coffee cake’s imaginary. You’re not missing anything. Some dream of tall things—ladders and giraffes. My dreams are filled with bricks, or things in the shape of bricks: a cow, a car, a refrigerator box. Even my imagination sleeps when I sleep and why not rest? Why crash the party on the astral plane? You’ll just be too tired to go to the real party later. Have you ever eaten Swedish meatballs at a dream party? They taste like your blanket because they are your blanket. Why is it we believe we only have one soul? Because it’s easier to set the table for one. And you can sing your dinner tune to yourself while you eat over the sink. The throat of the sink: silent. The throat of the argument: more silverware, a tablecloth, more gratitude. A kid under a tablecloth insists he’s a ghost. A table underneath a tablecloth is, I guess, like the rest of us, only pretending to be invisible. Or worse: dressed for work and not in the mood for, you know, how it all plays out. When I grow up, I’m going to be a truck, says the kid underneath the tablecloth, and that’s one way to deflect the weight of the inevitable, to insist on possibility in the face of grown-ups and the pumice of their compromises. The trees die standing. My Spanish teacher told me this. I had conjugated the verbs beforehand and taped them to the bottom of my sneaker. Cheater, yes. Also uninvested in the outcome. She could tell. Nothing to be done about it. Verbs of action and verbs of being. We, neither of us, were doing much anyway and the room was too hot. I think she meant uproot, which is a good thing to mean but a difficult thing to hear when you’re living under someone else’s roof. How do I tell you how I got here without getting trapped in the past? I suppose that’s a bigger question than I expected. He was such a colicky baby. Always fussing and crying. As if he didn’t want to be here. No, Mom. I don’t remember. And yes, it’s difficult to be here. Well, do what you can. It gets dark fast. Dear East Coast, I’m sorry it’s getting dark. It must be problematic, living in the future, always a few steps ahead, knowing things you shouldn’t say since they haven’t happened to the rest of us yet. And Poland? I don’t dare wonder what you know about tomorrow. Your grandma was from Poland. I know, Mom. And Grandpa was handsome and you were the smart one and the pretty one. Still am. Poor Barbara. Don’t start. Remember how you promised you wouldn’t write about me while I was alive? Yes, I remember. So if you’re writing about me now, that must mean something. You’re not sticking around for the end, then. You’re doing fine, Squish. And yes, I miss you, too. Astronaut, tell me about your home planet. Astronaut, text me when you land.