Mulchy quiet Thursday shift at work. The customers are not drinking. The fish are not biting. One man stumbles in off the street, after we watch him leaning against a taxi and laughing to himself. He can’t understand why we won’t serve him. But then he forgets what year it is and why he exists and he zig-zags away, his jelly legs sketching wide parabolas into the night.
I count a till and then sit hiding in the office, reading poetry on my phone. I feel small and nicely crumbling in the messy room in the big pub in the wailing world in millions of miles of nothingness. I feel on fire in my toes. I feel like putting on a comedy pirate hat and leaping headfirst into the void between life and death with a smile on my face.
Rhianna comes in and I don’t say anything about the poetry or the toes. I make jokes about some dumb thing, and she makes dumb jokes back, and we sit and stand there, humans separated by two skulls, and flesh, and empty air. And then I go and count the fruit stock.
When the customers leave Pat and Lizzie close the bar and Rhi checks upstairs, and I leap on a table to prove to God how tall I am. I grab Pat to pick him up but he doesn’t want so I rub his belly and let him go.
I’m made of curling chrysanthemums, my fingertips paint the air. I cash up the last till and watch Nina Simone saying goddamns on YouTube, and electricity sparks from her eyes to mine.
We have such vastnesses inside us. We are made of worlds of gold. And each treasure trove sits glimmering, seen by no one, touched by no one, and then collapses to sand.
What a ride!
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