Three cancellations have cleared my Thursday. Two excuses and a reason.
two told me: “Robin, I don’t want to get attached, it’s not you, it’s me.”
So here I sit, at the ocean’s edge, watching families pack baskets and fold beach towels by the corners. How odd I must seem: my slacks, my sunglasses, my book.
I am the leper longing for colony. I am the leper priests whisper at through walls. Is this what disappearing is? Watching those I love turn inward, turn away, heads lowered and eyes cast down? Have I become memory? I’m here! I want to scream, shaking shoulders, spitting on shoes. But I vanish. Miserably, in an ugly way - first my skin, then my nerves - my limbs, my toes, and my eyes.
I root my foot in the sand, I inurn my toes in a sandy crypt.
So here I sit: Franz Wright, me, and the California light: burning itself from the edges, in.
