Monday, June 15, 2009

SMALL JARS

I collected baby food jars. Every time that I had a painful experience or was in a time of frustration I would open one of these jars and fill it with the ether of emotion, cap it, and label it on the lid, figuring I'd open them later when I felt I was able to better deal with them. I wouldn't stick the tape on the sides or the bottom, because I wanted to see through that time, all the way through, see how the contents would change shape with looking through the glass-quantum like. I had about a hundred jars, all the way back from my teens when I started.

I had them up on a shelf, never out of sight. I would try to guess at what they were before I looked at the label. I got pretty good at that. I would arrange them as far as how painful each one was, then chronologically, or by their complexities like a vintage wine or, I guess, whine.

When the earthquake came, I heard the jars fall to the floor and smash. I jumped out of bed, the moments shattering in the darkness all around me, the sound splashing and running down the walls. I cut my feet on the broken air, I jumped off onto another painful lacerating moment that pierced high into my foot, up to my knee. All that pain I stored up.
All that pain.

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