Dad, please don’t shoot me in the back, I thought to myself. I’d been retrieving pellets from the wooden board used for our target practice, when the vision of him shooting me from behind appeared. Several times, I turned my head for a sideways glance, making sure the gun was not pointed at me. Dad just looked at me and said nothing, but the Larkin boys laughed heartily at my paranoia. I thought of my ancestors lined up at the edge of mass graves, waiting to be shot in the back, one by one, like a factory line of executions; the soon to be executioners finding humor and a perverse justice in their victims’ predicament.
Recycled memories
Did I remember to take my medication last night? I remembered, I think, but is this a memory of having remembered other times – a composite image of taking my pills twice a day, 365 days a year? Or do I remember the actual event of consuming my medication last night?
I search my mind, vividly imagining the two white pills, one being small and round, the other shaped like a caplet of Tylenol. I visualize my hands removing the bottle caps, taking out each pill and laying them on the couch beside my left thigh – a repetitive ritual initiated by me twice a day, once in the morning and once at night, rarely with any variation. I pick up and place the round tablet on the back of my tongue, and then the caplet, washing them back with some cold water, to descend my throat and do their thing, which is to lower blood pressure, slow heart rate, and eliminate palpitations.
Desert heat
If you believe in Satan, then imagine him as a trickster, silently positioning the potholes of life where you are most likely to trip and fall into them. Watch your step! – David M. Rubin
My love, have you noticed those seemingly perfect specimens of men living at our desert complex? Oh yes, I know that you’ve noticed them, as I’ve noticed you noticing them, with their enormous muscles, cryptic tats, and whatever else that fascinates you about them. They sit around the pool – 24/7 – with cold drinks, smiles, laughs, and the pretense of texting someone; all the while watching you…always watching you…keeping one eye on you, sometimes sneaking snapshots of you wearing THAT BIKINI purchased in 110 degrees of desert heat. Required pool attire, we now call it.
Enduring footprints
Imagine suffering a complete memory loss, an existential crisis that resonates with your first days on earth, when your mind was still a blank canvas having no knowledge of the inside and outside. Imagine losing any sense of who you are, who others are, and where you are. How would you move through the world and negotiate for support and protection? You would be like a newborn who knows nothing, being at the mercy of strangers to maintain your well being, but without an inkling as to their intentions. Your fear of the unknown manifested in nightmarish proportions.
Grimace
Dreaming on my bed cross-legged
Surrounded by still images:
memories, so to speak –
thousands of them
scattered and strewn
across the sheets,
carpeting the floor
from wall to wall.
Disorderly piles of them
like mountains and valleys
rising and falling
No rhyme or reason.
