The boss comes in with a crowd of knives and warns me of my death
and the boss is a mess and the boss does not know
that boss comes from the Dutch for ‘master’ and
the master has a skillet in her hand and an axe in
his hand and they are the opposite of shining and
they stay and they hack and I sit in my office made
of ice with the lights turned off so that I can pre-
tend that I’m dead and I’d died and the fine print
says that I must be lit on fire and mowed and we
are so good at creating hell and one of the corpses
at my feet whispers to us, all of us lying there,
whispers, If you have someone kind, you have
everything, and the phone rings and we wait.
Those who have quit life all seem to be packed into this elevator with me, waiting,
a feel that if we get trapped in here, it won’t matter, and it won’t matter,
so we wait and the numbers light up and we don’t even watch the numbers,
just watch the floor, numb, and dead, and secretly understanding that we
have quit life and we are old and not old and medium-old and we hide in
our memories and some of us used to gush our traumas, but now we just
hold them in, the way that a balloon holds in air, an old balloon, lying on
the ground, most of the air gone, not moving, and the woman next to me
quit life the longest amount of time ago and we can tell and we don’t look
at her and the floor doesn’t look at her and the nails all look at her, hungry.
In the prison, when they threw urine in my face, it reminded me
of when I was in the psych ward, the first night, exhausted, and they showed me my bed
and I collapsed into it, not realizing someone had pissed all over it, endless piss, all over
it, my face hitting it, in the dark, that feel of piss, the smell, God, the smell. It reminded
me of that. And it was good to be reminded. You forget sometimes. Then, I remember.
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Ron Riekki has been awarded a 2014 Michigan Notable Book, 2015 The Best Small Fictions, 2016 Shenandoah Fiction Prize, 2016 IPPY Award, 2020 Rhysling Anthology inclusion, 2019 Red Rock Film Fest Award, 2020 Dracula Film Festival Vladutz Trophy, 2019 Très Court International Film Festival Audience Award and Grand Prix, and 2022 Pushcart Prize. Right now, Riekki's listening to Alan Silvestri's "Logo" from the Back to the Future film score.