Lost/Found
December 25th, 2010 § Leave a Comment
So say you lost something – anything – and you’re looking for it in the lost and found.
It’s a bottomless cardboard box with black letters on the side, and filled with a whole multicolored mixture of things – ratty sweaters and smelly sneakers and half-filled waterbottles, shiny change that fell out of jacket pockets and umbrellas with the metal rods twisted up the wrong way.
So you jump into the box, and swim around a little bit, and it’s dark. Really dark. You might feel something on your leg and give a little start of fright, but then you realize that it’s really just your own hand, but it felt so foreign…
And you wonder why.
Why does a physical part of your own being feel like it doesn’t belong, why does it feel instead like it could be a cockroach weighing down on your jeans or the touch of the slimy arm of an unknown’s raincoat, why, why, why can’t you tell if the clothes on your body are really yours or if you’re just being smothered by other lost things, what on earth is that smell, is it you? is it me? or does it even smell at all -
And it turns out that the only option is to sit down, cross-legged, on the floor – if you could even call it that. So you swallow the bile rising in your throat, the disgust in apprehension of what you are about to do, and take a seat. It feels terrible, and you want to throw up. But you’re settled in now, and once you wedge yourself in between the socks and change purses and discolored cardigans, it’s quite comfortable. It’s quite nice, actually. Pretty. Warm. Nice. Comfortable. Nice, yes. Nice. Quite nice.
Nice.
Are you drunk?
No!
Get out now, you’re being suffocated, someone released carbon monoxide and you can’t even notice yourself sliding down the hills of running shorts and bags and old chapsticks and washcloths and then you’ll be lost, too, but isn’t that what you came for, to get lost, yes, to get found, yes -
And only when you wake up entangled in sheets and stripes and Kleenex boxes, do you think about the stupor, and shudder to yourself, and smile about when you will return.
