My Week

I burned myself on Monday, pouring water from the kettle down the bathtub drain. Hurt like a motherfucker but I didn't care. On Tuesday I sat before the camera for someone’s documentary. On Wednesday when I rode the train back home from work I tried to steal a sentence or two from what the woman next to me was reading. It was some kind of religious self-help nonsense, possibly a chapter on loss and grieving, banalities deflecting attention. Thursday J put the keyboard on the living room floor and picked out the melody from “Doctor Who.” We played guess that note and I started on dinner. And Friday is today. I had a vivid dream, what was it? Carrying something. The responsibility to carry. J’s looking through Magic cards, humming “Message in a Bottle.”

I had terrible heartburn in bed last night and as it has before it scrambled up my mind. The pain came in waves, as usual, but even when it receded I couldn’t think a decent, calming thought. At times I perceived a crazy zigzaggy pattern of meaningless activity in my brain, a web of colored lines like laser beams. I thought I was the character in those old folk songs where you lay down your head but you can’t get your rest. Maybe they had heartburn too.