Laundry List

This list includes my laundry, the colors mixed in with the whites, an utter disregard for the rules of the trade, a refusal to stay within the lines and to do as I’m told. This list includes the things to-do, which number too many or too few. This list includes my job, for which I have yet to create an acceptable label, and my sense of self, which I have carefully placed on the scale at the post office in order to affix the appropriate postage. It also includes a padded envelope.

It contains some small things, which you might not notice if they weren’t pointed out to you. For instance, it includes the precise mili-second I turned 11 years old. It contains one teaspoon of mercury and one standard-issue-thimble full to the brim of cold sweat, but it does not include the spoon itself nor the nightmare. This list includes my first gray hair. It includes the misplaced memory I have for that thing that I can’t remember. It includes the only letter “D” I ever got in my life. This list includes the 3 grains of sand that cling to the bottom of a strip of 3M brand scotch tape. It includes the eye of a needle and gravity. It includes singularity and the name Ed.

This list does not contain some big things, which were too large to include, like Jupiter or the human spirit.

This list does, however, include E.E. Cummings and all of the things that he intended for me not to mis;understand. This list includes the girl in the coffee shop, who for reasons still unclear to both of us, I will never marry. This list includes a used 9 volt battery, which can, although barely, still perform its manufacturer-intended-function. It includes Jermaine from 2^nd grade, who could walk upside down on his hands, but it includes the adult version who is no longer able to walk upside down on his hands and who is no longer in 2nd grade. This list includes the stray cat with the yellow stripes, the one with the firm belief that it is not lost, but merely taking an extended vacation from its home. This list also includes a box of the least popular cereal in aisle 13, whichever rice-puff or corn-crisp concoction that may happen be.

This list also includes you, but not all of you, just some parts. For instance, it includes the way you smell and the fit of your shoe on the night of the senior prom. It includes the grip of your handshake and the outline of your jaw. It includes the sensation you feel when you are tickled by someone by whom you are OK being tickled. It includes the second time you fell in love, but it doesn’t yet include the time you got back up. It includes the last time you watched a scary movie and thought there was someone else in the house. It includes the someone else that was in your house. In fact, it even includes your whole house, the one you grew up in, exactly as you no longer remember it. It includes all the things you meant to say but didn’t. For the sake of balance, it also includes all the thing you said but should not have. The emotion you feel when you first notice that I’ve written again is transcribed into sheet music and is included on this list. This list includes a sound indistinguishable from the echo your laugh would make at the bottom of the Grand Canyon on an oppressively hot afternoon in August, but it does not include the laugh, the month of August, nor the Grand Canyon itself. It includes your belief in things that will never happen to you. It includes the two things I won’t name, but which I’ve wrapped in colored paper and set aside for you as a surprise. (It includes my hope that you will like it.) It includes your 4^th favorite geometric pattern and the name of your unborn son, whom his 5^th grade friends will appropriately rename, Chunk.

This list is not all-inclusive. For instance, this list will not include lyrics like, “please don't forget how much I meant to you/when you are redefined by someone new,” because they have chosen to exclude it, those with powers in such matters. This list will not include diagrams similar to those found at http://www.heimlichinstitute.org/howtodo.html, because this list does not seek to guide you in such matters. This list does not include any of the people of alternative lifestyles or sensibilities that populate this town, only because they seem quite content here and because they do not wish to be included on this list. This list once included Pope Pius IX, but it no longer does, nor will it ever again at any point in the future. This list contains all the girls with whom I will ever be in love, but it does not include the 2,592^nd time I utter the phrase ‘I love you,’ because they, who decide such matters, are not yet sure to which among them it will belong. This list contains a brown paper bag full of broken pieces of something that was once whole.

This list is mostly complete. This list only includes a few things that are not on this list.

The only copy of this list will be framed and placed in a bulletproof suitcase, which will be handcuffed to a man with a lengthy criminal history, who will sit silently in the backseat of a taxi that will take him half way across the country to the intersection of US Route 50 and US route 281 just south of the small town of St. John in Kansas. This list will be left there among other such lists and will never be spoken of again.