BILLS IN THE PICNIC BASKET I hop barefoot across the august coals of Tuesday afternoon to get my mail at the communal mailboxes a quarter mile away at this thousand-holed birdhouse for people nothing but bills I remember when I was a kid my mom would get the mail there was always something magical about the mail I would ask her What did we get? I imagined something wonderful would come one day something that would change our lives rip us out of our dull routine make my mother smile maybe money or a ticket to another world or city maybe something from Ed McMahan or an invitation to the Price is Right but my mother would always say the same thing “Just bills” she’d throw them into a picnic basket by the table and start boiling the same old macaroni I always thought it was somehow my mother’s fault that all we got was bills that she must be doing something wrong to be so unhappy and when I was 18 years old I got the hell out of there I ran like the wind but I learned pretty quickly that it wasn’t my mother’s fault at all the world was a sick and stupid place that cost too much and it ate good people alive I walk back towards my apartment this Tuesday afternoon 35 years later smell the fire of someone’s barbecue a little altar there in the middle of the grass a rib-eye smolders the tongs lay just so a brown bottle of something with the cap off where is the chef I wonder maybe he went inside to take a piss or get the salt or maybe the phone rang I clutch my stack of bills and want to toss them into the barbecue coals disrupt this peaceful little still-life I put my bills close to the heat smell the charred meat see the blood seeping out god it would feel so nice to watch these bills go up in flames but what then more would come they’d shut off my utilities it wouldn’t solve anything instead I put the bills in my pocket think of the macaroni waiting for me at home grab that steak off the grill hot hot hot hot toss it back and forth in my bare hands run like the wind.
Posted on: Fri, 19 Jul 2013 20:27:07 +0000
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