a little off kilter

"50 words for every haiku"

was what my friend B said.

I have no idea who is keeping score, but I am mostly a straight shooter, mostly.


The cart was slow as fuck, and luckily the punk rock kid was working.

He and I share the same musical taste and can rock out during the doldrums.

We washed up, and dished through Sticky Fingers and bullshitted through a bit of Small Faces, and when it was time to leave, he hugged me goodbye and that was that.

I met up with a friend for grocery shopping and coffee.

I wanted to go to the hippie Co-op.

I wanted the fir scented soap.

I wanted the hippies and the cob building and the kombuche and the bins of bulk food.

What a shitty weird week.

I have no idea why it even felt that way.

My friend's dog had eaten garbage and peed around.

My dog had done no such thing.

I had no reason to complain.

My mother is sick.

She is scaring me by being sick.

Most people who are 48 are scared when their mothers get sick, because their mothers are old people, but my mother is not old. 

My mother is youngish, ish.

My mother scares me, because if something happened to her it would be too strange and complicated and hard.

That is one of the very odd things that the children of teen parents have to deal with, young parents that are oddly and complicatedly connected to you.

So my husband went shopping for cough medicine and dropped it off, while I drank coffee and tried to explain the complexities of my inner life, without seeming like too big of a self involved asshole. 

My trans friend R said that everything felt like s/he should not be bothered by the things that were bothering him/her, and I wanted to drive over and make a blanket fort in his studio and hug him for hours, except that would be weird because we are not really huggers. 

I mean I am not.

I am more of a laundress.

A washer of dishes.

An ironer of linens.


So it was that kind of terrible day, with complicated feels and zero blanket forts and sick mothers, and shitting dogs and tipless food carts, and husbands that purchase cold meds.