by A. Annesi

If I could only … I wish I could … if I could just …

If I could just get out of my own way enough to finish a thought, I could really get somewhere.  But it’s hard, sometimes, to untangle the thread of thoughts when I’m stuck inside them with the Memphis blues again, or tangled up in blue or just tangled.

This isn’t a day in the life but a moment, and not in the life of a great decision maker but of anybody or nobody sloughing her way through the ability to think though simple things, like, should I take the train to work, or get in the car and keep driving and not look back.  But it’s not about the car, or driving, or work, is it?

It’s about wondering where life is going—whether it’s really worth writing another word the world won’t read, working a job that may not be there tomorrow, or later today, or caring for an older parent, always wondering whether you’re doing your best.  It’s about big things, these things, but it’s about little things, too, and that’s the hard part, when little things start getting to you, all of them, and you can’t escape because they’re inside you, part of you.

You figure this inability to focus is the result of exhaustion.  You just need to rest, you tell yourself.  And it is about being tired, a little, but then you wake after sleeping and the exhaustion is still there, woven into you like catgut from which you can’t extricate yourself without tearing your soul.  So, you try not to move, to keep still, because if you don’t move, don’t allow your mind to stray outside the twine, you won’t become entangled, won’t hurt yourself in the process.  Just stay inside the lines, you tell yourself, like coloring, safe, but stifling, like the air going out of a room.

Breathe in, though, because the air is still there.

Take your tired thoughts one at a time like a strand of yarn in a skein, and set each aside until you have one you can deal with, and start there.  Then go on to the next.  I had a calculus professor who taught his students to start tests that way, one problem at a time.  If the first was too hard, he told us, go on until you find one you can do, and start with that, like clawing your way out of a hole or a shallow grave.  But that professor gave points for getting your name right.  How I miss him.