Periphery

I have always thought God could have made me more convincing. If He was going to make my life this unfortunate, the least He could have done was provide visible compensation bright enough to survive first impressions, a talent that would excuse the inconvenience of knowing me, a face people might forgive for whatever follows it. A placeholder occupying its own coordinates, floating, not tragic enough in the right way to be interesting. Instead I seem to have been given the less marketable arrangement of things. A certain tendency toward difficulty. A talent for making a problem out of whatever room has been kind enough to contain me. It does not seem to matter how carefully I move. I have failed to anticipate certain consequence, alteration in the atmosphere after I have gone, the sort of thing no one mentions because mentioning it would require admitting that I was the cause. At the end of day, I will slam the door shut, But I’ll never barricade it. Who dare knock? Who stands in the hallway hearing the hinge settle into its old complaint. I suspect there is something migratory in ruin. It does not require an invitation. It has an excellent sense of direction. I can leave the windows latched, carry my shoes in my hands and still wake to find them nesting beside the curtains. If someone were to love me, I think I would spend the first year cataloguing the discrepancies the margin between my face and whatever face they'd hung upon it. What must it be, to be awaited? To have another's attention lean toward the door before your hand finds the knob. There must be a vertigo in it to learn that in the walled country of another's mind, I’ll cavort at the parish line. I cannot picture myself inside.