*
The Last List
Samiha Matin
*
L*STS: an Essay Daily Happening | About & Contents
Lists | Lasts | Losts | Lusts | Lests | Other
*
I know the old geezer who’s about to receive my list of grievances isn’t going to be pleased. You see, there had been a long line all day, full of many clients who arrived with all sorts of grievances, each one superseding the last, no matter how you measured it, and he’d had to go without coffee since noon after the machine collapsed into itself. (I promise you I had nothing to do with it, even as I stood staring at him and the machine for the whole nine hours.) It’s bad enough a job as it is. One room, one desk, no windows.
“Just one sheet?” he says, grabbing my list from my hand as soon as I approach the desk, even before I’ve opened my mouth to say hello.
“Yup,” I say. “I wrote everything on it.”
“Anything you want to summarize for me before I file it away?” he asks brusquely. “You’ve probably heard from everyone by now. The usual complaints, in the usual order: parents; partners; neighbors; co-workers; bosses. Politicians, of course.”
He turns extra chatty: “They come up all the time, you know, but nowhere near as much as Amazon deliverymen. That’s up everyone’s ass. I had a five-year-old complaining about same-day Prime the other day.”
He suddenly withdraws into himself and mutters, “The old geezer’s never gonna catch a break now.”
“No, it’s impossible for me to summarize my list,” I say. “I can’t say anything else right now. I must go.”
“What? Why?” he snaps, placing the list squarely in front of him without looking at it. “What makes you so goddamn special that you’ll say nothing to anyone and just leave like that?”
“Because—because—I don’t want to bother anyone—”
“Because you think you’re so much better than everyone?” he says at the same time, staring up at me with watery-blue eyes. He narrows them, and they suddenly disappear. “Is it the irrepressible work ethic and sanctimonious attitude that keep you at bay? Is that it, sweetheart? Rest assured, everyone’s playing that trump card these days. My book’s full of the same old shit about how every person in here imagines they’re the last person in the universe who can be blamed.”
“No. No! Why don’t you take a good look at the list first, you old fool, before preaching your horse manure to me? Alright?”
After he finishes reading the one glaring word on there, I make a grand gesture with both hands. It mimics an explosion. A supernova. Gravity clenching my fingers. Tearing my hands apart. As far from each other as possible.
“What the hell does that mean?” he says. “And this?” He’s waving the paper like a flag.
“Everything. Everything,” I respond. “Everything’s a grievance right now.”
And then I reach across the desk and take the list back from his ancient hands and put the whole thing into my mouth. I start biting down as hard as I can. The paper tears itself into smaller and smaller and even smaller bits, until it’s all dust and atoms and silvery star powder inside my mouth once again.
*
I was very interested in writing lists, even if mine ended up contrarian: just a word, encompassing everything and nothing at once. I’m not sure how to interpret the story myself. This might be the first draft of a larger short story I can write. I’ve been bogged down in bureaucratic quagmires for a while, so that was obviously an inspiration. I was also looking at an old draft of a villanelle about parallel worlds and listening to N.W.A., so in extremely odd ways, as usual, this list (or anti-list) came about.
Samiha Matin is a full-time writer of literary and popular fiction, with proficiency in poetry, non-fiction, and scholarly essays. She holds degrees from the University of Michigan, the University of Arizona, and the University of North Texas, where she is working on her PhD in Creative Writing. Her favorite place in the world is the Laniakea Supercluster.
No comments:
Post a Comment