Today on my way to the dentist, my daughter calls to say the refrigerator went out, and the rice cooker and microwave turned themselves off. Nothing tripped the circuit breakers, no lights flickered. A friend in the neighborhood said when the lights in her son's room flicker, which is often, she's freaked out. She's tempted to call out Is that you, Appa? I tell her I wish it were ghosts messing with our appliances, with this whole awful month of work problems, mood problems, money problems—at least I might be able to talk to them, vent, cry, rail. My other daughter says it's Mercury, again in retrograde. The mysterious scar on my right shin, my spilled drink, the pod that burst out of the coffee machine; the car's A/C sputtering hot breaths before juddering into silence, the package delivery left overnight on the step, in the rain: all from some misalignment in the heavens. Whether or not it's so, I don't want to talk to Mercury rolling around in its slippery orbit. I phone for an electrician and hope he can find and fix what's wrong. In the meantime I walk from room to room asking What else do you want from me? What do you really want?
Purveyors of fine poetry since 2003.