by Christina Davis
She said, I love you.
He said, Nothing.
(As if there were just one
of each word and the one
who used it, used it up).
In the history of language
the first obscenity was silence.
My lover’s been whisked away this weekend, tossed without warning onto a late-night flight. I was going to head down to Chinatown today for the New Year’s parade but, in the light of this very sudden change of plans, I decided to stay in and finally print out my finished tax paperwork instead. Maybe attack some of my often neglected German lessons or my backlog of programming tutorials, too. Do laundry. Productivity in solidarity! Jah. Der junge ist in einem flugzeug. Das mädchen wartet mit liebe in ihrem herzen.
Also on the to-do list: hang the aluminum deer head, sift through the last three two mess boxes, get printer ink, print tax forms, make a packet of them and mail them off, polish the silver tea-cups, update the minimalfox blog, sort the mending, do some mending, bathe the cats, clean out the hall closet, list more things for sale, finish David’s laundry, fold the towels, research nifty stops for April’s roadtrip, find a SATA case enclosure, apply for another First Aid certificate, patch the wall, fix the coat rack, get signed up for Quest, take the returnables to the recycling center, measure art for framing, find suitable picture frames, write a poem and a love letter, track down An Idiot Abroad, deliver books to Jenn, rediscover my recipe for cake-inna-cup, bleach the shower curtain, harass Young Drivers of Canada, arrange for more driving lessons, rewrite my CV, update A Thread of Grace, identify what’s in the mystery cord drawer, go swimming, soak in a hot tub, fiddle with foxtongue.com, replace duvet, help clean mum’s house, empty and sand the bureau, check my contacts prescription, acquire contacts, replace the VHS, find out the shipping costs for the IKEA flooring, take the medium format film to The Lab to be processed, attempt ice-skating, sort the linens, attack under the bathroom sink, take vitamins, rearrange what’s on the living-room walls, properly group my data, find the paperclips, back up the laptop, shed a light into the shadows of my heart, lime powder my boots, re-glue the soles, find a home for the electric pussy-willow, paint the baroque frame in my bedroom, replace my bike chain, get a spindle of blank DVDs, tidy the pigeon-holes, file and folder paperwork by year, update Craigslist postings, catch up on photo processing, attend a poetry slam, reply to neglected letters, change the sheets, bake cookies, listen to more Vampire Weekend, put all my change into a penny jar, replace a hook on a bra, try to track down silver-notebook, have a snuggly date night, collect my mail from Seattle, take more pictures of my friends, untangle my computer cable spaghetti, make some media mix-tapes, schedule a Sunday Tea…