Returned Check
Every time I think about what day it is, in this month of impromptu daily love letters, I realize that in my mind it is still April. Or already April. Wow it’s already Thanksgiving? Hmph. In any case, not November. I am constantly surprised it is November. November of last year, I spent all of my money and today, I get a returned check for all of that tender.
I want everybody to take the cringey feeling they get when they read this and other lovelorn metaphors and sit with it, to use a phrase I hear a lot in community circles. Think for a moment about how much energy it takes to squeeze a bicycle brake. Whether it is the satisfaction of using your grip, or the assurance of all of the machinery you have invested in with gyroscopic energy, maintenance, money. Think of all of the time you spent meticulously engaging and disengaging your bike locks. But the act of squeezing the brake is a punctuation—the grace of halting motion cannot be discounted, even if the goal was in fact, always to get somewhere. Safely is the part I keep forgetting. I assure you as well, this feeling is a conversation. I would like to return the favor. It might be enough that a legally binding I.O.U. still thinks you live at the address you gave me, though I’ve forgotten how much time has passed because it is still or already April to me and no one wants to stay here but me.
