My things represent my life because they are my life. My life is in this room. Blackout curtains block the planet-sized satellite dish. The dish overlooks the pool five stories below. And across the way there is another giant building with the exact same apartments housed within. Each has a minuscule balcony that nobody uses unless someone is smoking. Sometimes I smell cigarette smoke from the millennials who live next door. On Saturday nights they play rap. I have never met them.
What’s familiar to me are my knitting needles and my yarn. I know people I see on my decrepit television. I know when the TV finally dies I won’t have that. I try to focus on what I do have. Yet, I have less and less wish to bother. But, I’m still a writer. I still have that.
I want to finish the hat I’m knitting for my son. I want to finish something. I wanted to finish my life, but I haven’t and I won’t. When I die I hope there’s something good to do. Something to finish.
I have memories. I want to talk about them and, more than anything, I want to see them. Wind around Hope Valley. Eat a sandwich at the Genoa Store. Jump on the journey Playa. Jump into a truck, drive into the desert. Discover natural hot springs. Smile. Pack lunch for a spontaneous back into Nevada.
Watch sunsets from my own porch. I want to make toast in my kitchen with my own dishes. I also want to drink water from a glass I remember finding at the thrift store. I’m sitting on my bed, 8 stories off the ground. Black curtains hiding an outside that means nothing and I’m looking at Facebook, which should mean nothing.
I watch their memories being flung into a cloud. Into clouds. Into a forgotten place, where green water makes up a dark pond. I jumped. And sank into the quilted textiles of my worlds. I still breathe in a there, in that world that persistently takes place 5 years ago.
Confusion forces me to stop questioning. If my point of reference is 5 years behind this minute, then this minute changes infinitely. These changes occur in an infinity of infinite blocks of time.
From when, from where—am I subtracting time?
Michelle O’Kane 