Late

I wanted to be there early, to that sorority of women who push evolution along. I wanted to be there on time. I wanted to be there when everyone else was arriving.

I wanted to blend in, to move with the bodies that were moving already. I wanted to press my body into that one body, already making itself. Then I would not be noticed for my individuality.

I wanted to make it easy. A life made easy. One small life. That’s all I wanted.

I had a friend. She got it all so easy. Oops and she arrived, first time, even after all that coke and pot and those drink-filled nights. So easy, and they drew back the velvet rope and let her slide right in.

I didn’t want to lose it. Or if I had to lose it, I didn’t want to have it, anyway, in the first place. Something—or someone—laughed, I think, coming along, letting me peek inside, then and ripping it all out of me. Take it out, flush it, clots, down the toilet. Barred again.

I make cookies. I make paper airplanes. I make piles of rumpled, dirty clothes and I make them clean and folded. I even make the African violet bloom, sometimes.

That is, when I don’t forget. When I am not late with the things it needs. When I am not off doing whatever I did to let it all go to hell.

I am not late. I am in hell.

I wanted to be there early, but I couldn’t find the door. I couldn’t find the man who would open it.

Now I am not late. I am not late, isn’t that good?

No. I am so far behind that I have not even arrived yet.

Or maybe I’m just in the queue, the line of vacuous losers, who are never let in.

I want to be myself-plus, expanded. I want to be lush, to be flushed, and ripe.

Instead, I am gutted, rutting against the alarm, the tick-tick-tick of the calendar clock.

It’s night now, and I can push it all down in to darkness, what little darkness there is on this solstice evening.

I was young, but everyday now I am reminded that I wasted it.

I wanted to be early, to be on time. To have it. To hold.

It’s too late for that now.