For so long he didn’t lock his door, not so that people could come in but to create the illusion that he could go out. He made it through a few months of video calls but when that became too much he just turned on his camera and mimed his side of a call. He ate food at his kitchen table and left it there, imagining that a waiter might come. He bought a guitar over the internet and wrote one couplet. He exercised in the hallway, sometimes walking halfway up the walls. He investigated at length whether an oil stain on his sofa could be cleaned. He took down books from the bookcase and, failing to read them, returned them to the shelf. He imagined better plots for past relationships. He failed, above all, to sleep, instead remembering what he had eaten, or commending himself on exercise, or condemning himself for spilling salad on his couch, or pretending that the next day he might lock the door, or repeating the single composed couplet over and over again, “Everyone is lost out on the trails / Seeking holy and unholy grails.”
©2020 Ben Greenman/Stupid Ideas
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