Mental Exertion Alone Will Not Set You Free

by Karen Ashburner


I remember building a tower; I remember legos and color schemes.  I had this idea.  I had this idea I had a cowboy.  I had a cowboy but I left him to become a scientist.  I had this idea I was a scientist but what is left of it now?  I cannot bake cookies.  I get lost on short trips to the supermarket.  I stand in front of the meat market for hours, watching young boys in white aprons mop up the blood.  I've got nothing going; I left it all at the bus station: my legos, my color schemes, my tower.  I made it all too difficult.  I got on a bus and headed north, to Paris.  But the nights are cold here.  The days are long and filled with too much sun.  I imagine the outline of my dirty footprint on the wall.  Am I the only one dreaming?  I wanted to be alone with my tower.  I wanted to take long walks in the city.  I wanted to take pictures of strangers and imagine their color schemes, their legos, their towers.  But sometimes I just want to annihilate.  I am consumed now that I have been consumed.  I thought I had a cowboy but he was really just a stranger, outlined on top of a horse made of legos.  Is it really so hard?  I want to leave behind love notes made from macaroni, to press my chest upon the glass counter in the candy store.  I made a card for him out of a book I bought for two dollars.  I bought him a book for two dollars but kept it hidden in my bag.  I live like a stranger to myself.  I live like a stranger building a tower out of red macaroni.  When I am old and dying I will trace the outline of my hand on a piece of white paper.  I will send it to him with the book, and the tower, and seven new stories about my lonely trip to Paris.  
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