Sanctuary
by Jack Caseros
It takes a long time after figuring out just how little there is to do that you start forgetting about the boredom. Boredom is boring (obviously)—but less so than worrying about boredom, which feels like an imminent bear mauling that never comes. All the terror, but the claw never even rips through your skin. Boredom is long in the tooth, except that it’s not predatory, it’s just for show, and just if you are right for breeding. Time sips through in little gulps; the beast menacing, calm collected watching you fritter—it paces, the light glints off its long fangs, and all the while a small beast grows inside you, ready to burst out at any opportune moment— Waiting for the bus outside your room, waiting and waiting and listening to the same playlist loop through your ear buds, all two thousand five hundred ninety eight songs clip clip clapping with no solace, nothing new, nothing unexpected, not even the bus, right on time at eight fortytwo— Eating lunch, eager for the noodles on your styrofoam mall plate, but you are feeding the beast, and it creeps up through your fingertips, reaches for anything, for the stupid free news rag or your phone or a napkin to twist twist twist with no solace, nothing new happening today on Twitter, same old shit, nothing unpretentious, not even your ex-girlfriend Sasha’s manic aphorisms about loving and letting go so you can hunt down— (Sasha is bored too, she watches TV in the background and peruses her phone, updates her Facebook profile every thirty seconds and Twitters about the next commercial she’s seen a thousand times)—
Standing on the job in the middle of a neat suburban lawn raking thatch and wondering how four years of philosophy left you with a seasonal gardener for rich people who don’t care to do more than watch their hydrangeas bloom out of the corner of your eye—and each little pile of thatch looks like a new face—you look again and you recognize them, they look the same as every face you have seen—nothing unintended there, just the parietal flexing its grey muscle—
(Sasha sees faces too, hundreds of them, some unfamiliar but tagged, which leads to more photos and further strangers, all oddly familiar, and complete with a small profile to help her feel that she is not so alone in the world, she is just faraway)—
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