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Remote Control
Plath’s fig leaves become mine, wafting down, playing escape and evade they morph into a remote control. I grope for their wilting ends: Click. One life illuminates the screen Click. Another... Click. ...another...until I am channel surfing through the sitcoms and dramas and infomercials of subsistence. Why didn’t I just order basic cable? Too many choices...taunting me, not wanting to be left behind and yet running ahead of me so quickly I am out of breath. My imagination gets a stitch in its side and pauses to allow no other thought but the searing pain of too many of them. It stops, rests, leans up against a tree, under the shade. Waiting for another leaf to fall. Waiting for the wind to catch it in its arms and kidnap it for the simple ransom of a decision. Maybe not so simple. As I turn the leaves of my mind over to read their lines, their vivid descriptions that I am unable to convey, I search for the meaning they so desperately want me to see but cannot spit out. Another page crumbles through my fingers. The story is lost to me. If only I had had a pen. I would have taken meticulous notes, diligently learned, remembered. I look down at my feet to see the scattered dust and kneel. My fingers trace patterns, designs, endless, elaborate, complete. I erase, begin again. Now, I know - it is not set in stone. I choose not one pattern but many. Not one leaf, but all. I shut off the television and go to bed, yawning. Maybe tomorrow I’ll watch a movie instead. Lisa Game, 2001 |