I AM ALWAYS WORKING

I am always working. Working working working. Working while I eat and sleep and come. Cum
I mean. When I cum. Even now in lieu of cumming I am working. Working on what? Working on
becoming someone because to write is to inhabit someone interesting and someone interesting
is always working. It is all very simple and indeed working can be anything–that is why it is
always happening. I am always working.

You are also working when you are drinking. Drink gives life give, it lets the light bend. I
imagine going to the bar for a drink. I can write there too, this is work. At a bar you can find all
sorts of people. The bar does some sorting in this matter but not much considering that
everyone is as different as the next. A bar in daytime, with roman blinds that let light in,
catching all that slanted dust is quite perfect. A bar in daytime with a man, maybe two, is even
more perfect.

Collection is a form of work. I am collecting things I tell myself. They are not stories–no–they
are repetitions. I kneed them into perfect round spheres, no lumps, bumps or pointy edges.
Round enough to roll across a slightly slanted surface. You can also collect things but you must
admit that it is the same thing, and indeed that everything in this world is as different as it is the
same. There is no organization, only work, and work only complicates.

Cigarettes. I have no feeling that these things are not cliques. That substance was not inherited
from the last less complicated self. That feeling fuckable has everything to do with death–we
have heard it all before, it is indeed trite. And we admit to ourselves that everything is in favor of
fucking and that fucking only gets us that much closer to death and it has always been so and we
will always say it is.

And then the man is there, sure any man. But a particular man, as particular as he is ubiquitous.
He is there standing over you, the frame is at an angle. His right eye starts migrating slowly up
towards his eyebrow. It is almost unnoticeable, but slowly, then all at once he becomes
monstrous. You have never loved him more. When the man bends down he is all skin, weight
and blood. You are everything beneath.

You wake up, swathed in white sheets, hungry. Kiss with your stale morning mouth, what
changes then? He is angelic with his tea. Angelic in the shower, his eye is in the right spot. Then
the coffee, morning coffee tastes like front steps, tastes like grass and enormous drooling dogs.
Everything tastes like the sky from the year before last, the sky and its blue over the lake. The lake
that one time in June. Everything tastes this good.

The difference between the universe and a moment is a pea. It’s only slightly bigger than a baby’s
throat. The small thing we pinch between forefinger and thumb, that thing that might be stuck
up the nose. That is the difference. Imagine this but in the form of sound, a pop like a lid going
on or coming off. That is the difference between the universe and a moment, and that difference
is the same difference that distinguishes a lake from a grape.

In the kitchen you bend me over. I think about the world slowly turning, I think about the pea, I
think about how much work I’ve been doing, and that I deserve a break. You have something
small and round in your mouth–it is my pinkie toe. The kitchen is a bit chilly. I am on the
counter you on the floor. I think about the front step coffee, about what I am making for dinner,
then all of a sudden I am thinking of nothing and only feel the end of it all.

Love. Love is alright in the end. I don’t want to belabor the point. Love indeed is alright in the
end. In the end love is alright. Alright, love is the end.

Isa Riedl was born in San Francisco. She lives in Brooklyn and is the editor-in-chief of The Goose Egg.