The Days Are So Long
All of the emails piling on top of each other like a highway accordion crash. Red Corolla into Black Tesla into an email from a local spray foam company who got my email from a grab bag of sold products. We are always the marks.
Driving like a drone down a long road and into the hills and mountains only to be honked at by Helen, who is 63, smoking a ciggie, and wearing a floral house dress. She has places to go. I am wandering.
Everyone collaborating to slow me down and make a trial and a tribulation inside of a shot glass turned over on a wooden table to catch a fly. For the fly, the day is getting shorter.
Life as a centrifuge, spinning into helpless oblivion before standing to try to run a blindfolded relay race with an egg on a spoon. Some things are beyond hopeless.
Bark falls from a tree, and the ants celebrate because now they can board this boat headed nowhere. At least they will have snacks along the way. The branches look down in disdain.
A dog lifts his leg on a red fire hydrant, but stops. He decides red is not his favorite color, and he would rather walk around the corner and pee on a white car’s left front tire. There are so many choices in life.
I get home after five and climb onto my half-made bed with my cats. The sun winks at me, trying to change my mood. It works, for a second, until another email plays centipede with all the others. The inbox is a truckload of arrogance.
My mail person left a package on my porch and also left three pieces of mail next to it. My mailbox wasn’t full. Everyone is phoning it in.
If everyone can reach everyone at all times, what does time really mean? Are we the sand in the hourglass? If so, I want to crack the top half of the glass and pour out whatever sand is still in there onto the ground next to a wilted wildflower.
I wonder if stemware dreams of being antifragile too.
© Jonathan Greene, August 12, 2026
