Today, I am steering myself into fresh agonies. The rain

falling heavily appears to be boiling the surface of things.

Despite the pummelling, when the rain stops, the grass

releases an aromatic scent that, if it were a foreign word,

would mean love. Would mean forgiveness. I’m terrible

at future-casting. I slept on Google and Apple shares.

I invested in what no ear has heard, no eye has seen.

I walk around couples taking pictures of each other on

sidewalks. Age is “shrinkflation.” The visible world

grows ever smaller, despite it taking three connections,

across a day, to reach Koh Samui, Thailand by plane.

Memory is a Homecoming Weekend where trees still

line the cobblestone path and the campus quad is eerily

deserted, except for the one cannon sitting prominently

in the centre, where some random joker has painted it

with the words, this is not real. In sum: do I cry or sing?

Even if the years were unkind, they all retreat in the end.

By then, I will be a pile of carbon ash carefully scraped into

the world’s most expensive marble jar. The news says

climate change, the Right and the Left, brick and mortar

retail stores, everything is going to break. Well, speaking

as the frequently broken, nothing is beyond repair.

I’m giving up skepticism’s time-share. I’m renegotiating

the terms of my lease. I want a clause that says I deserve

my share of happiness, my little plot of dreams, a summer

sans brush-fires, a 50/50 draw in good luck. I need

a first aid kit of laughing gas. A bushel of smiles.

Something to poison my anxieties with joy.