so... she was football?

have i talked to you about the insomnia? i don't know, because i haven't slept in two weeks. this yields a certain disorder to my thoughts, a sort of vulnerability, a lapse of sensibly. i am in lunesta withdrawal. i don't want to be; found a dependency on prescription sleep aids a pleasant vacation from worrying. but like all vacations, it was rather rudely cut short--why else, but because of money. without insurance, lunesta will run me $300 a month. it's sort of like when i wanted to stay in south africa an extra few decades, but realized i had about $10 left in my bank account.

i don't know what mamie's excuse is. the other day, she goes: i can't even commit to a grocery store. i'd been talking to her for what must have been several hours, distantly noting the whoosh of new grocery store doors in the background.


she called a second ago, out of breath. gym? i ask. no, she gasps, i was just jogging through the parking lot to my car.

mamie can't commit to a grocery store, but she can commit to speed-walking through one of those stores pumping gallon jugs of milk. doing lunges with cantaloupes.

we're both lost. mamie almost hit someone on a highway the other day and, you know her superstitiousness, every time she drives by this ghost of an accident she's overwhelmed, routinely haunted by what almost happened. a death, she says. i think, a ding, but don't say anything.

i was telling her about this cousin i have, how she got pregnant at 14. i'm whispering the story from the library where i am curled on the floor behind a stack of magazines, my eyes bloodshot and wide. she drives by this spot on the road and vanishes from the world--i can feel her horror pulsing over the line. she was fourteen, i repeat. masterfully, mame returns to the conversation says: so... she was football?

i think of that card with some cheesy sixties house-wife photo in digicolor: i am becoming the man i wanted to marry.