Monday Morning

As I stand on the barnacle-rocks, shrouded in a languid sheet of fog, I can hear a foghorn dutifully groan its walrus-like hum. The sound rises and tumbles over and over the empty ocean just before sunset. I cannot see its source; I only feel the cold wind and the smooth solidity of the gray-green boulders I stand on. Fade to black.

Shit. Monday. The first thing I can perceive is the near-full moon, coalescing in the half open blinds that spread across one glass wall of my house. It stares me down and I realize that I can still hear the foghorn from that desolately real dream. I wrestle my alarm clock to the ground and phase into the bathroom in a desperate attempt to enliven myself in welcome heat.

Shit. Monday. It doesn’t work. Now that I still feel awful but with my hair cold, heavy and wet, I phantom my way down the stairs without waking the dog. The beaming red light from the water tower and liquid blue flame that erupts out of my stove are the only light I need. I’m sore, but I juggle orange juice, glassware, eggs, and various produce in the hopes that the ingredients will fall into their respective places. Steel slides across steel as my right hand calluses and chef’s knife become one. Garlic, peppers, and onions evaporate into smithereens to sizzle in the oil as my arm rocks back and forth. Fwip. I don’t know the humble, prepped taste of Pop-Tarts and Cheerios. Good.

Shit. Monday. The coffee filter is dirty. I have two, but the clean one in the cupboard is cracked on two sides, which somehow makes me feel insecure. I toss it into its green, plastic funnel that sits anxiously on a Pyrex glass coffee pot. Bop. The fierce whirr that raises the dog’s ears but not her eyelids turns potent black beans into black chili powder ready to be steeped in pure water. I crisscross my arms, spatula in one hand, tired old aluminum kettle in the other. I brew and cook simultaneously and lower stove heats with my right knee. I’m very interested in stem cell research because I’d like to grow another arm.

Shit, it’s got to be Tuesday. It ought to be because I’ve acknowledged the real fact enough and it seems only fair for one sleepy morning to be out of the way, but it’s not. The eggs are damn good. I think I was supposed to have a book completely read for English class today that I never bothered to buy. Damn good eggs. I eat maniacally, standing up with a plate in my left and a stabbingfork in my right. I always do this when I’m alone, cooking for myself. All the sautéing is too exciting to simply sit down and consume anticlimactically. I will rave and swear of my food insanely (like my father), not submit insouciantly to its tastiness.

Shit, it’s 6:40! Diesel burns outside my house and the bus driver wields that monstrosity like it’s a battle-axe, weaving around parked cars and taking off with that narrow, yellow door closed before the poor freshman bastards can sit down. I pull the nylon cords on my steel-toed boots tight and wrap them around my ankles once or twice for good measure, letting baggy black pants envelop the tops. I wrap myself in a black canvas duster that’s lost all its buttons and storm out the door. The Democratic campaign bumper sticker is ragged and hastily pinned onto my school bag. I pull a stray foot-long blonde hair out of the sticker's sticky side. I guess I’m a bit eccentric. Good. I board the bus at a later stop with my heavy stainless steel coffee mug hovering eerily outside my clothing. That mug is powerfully hard. I am convinced that if I were to be involved in a fight while in possession of that mug, my bludgeoning abilities would surpass the burliest of men. There is nothing in my coffee but coffee itself.

Good, it’s Monday.