Costco Runs
Updated: Dec 4, 2021
You said, “you can’t paint pictures in the basement all day.”
I listened.
Packed up the oils & reverie.
It marked the first
of many
days
the artist
was chipped away.
A layered
sort of decay.
Like I forgot to floss,
allowing all the rot of routine
control me;
and I still hear you
harping in my mind,
like a scratched CD,
“The basement is bleak,
damp
with sunken dreams—
there are safer
places
to be.”
File room clerks
or slicing deli meats,
$9 per hour—
at least the coffee is free.
We were driving to Costco,
passing a car
lot,
you could
not
avoid asking why my lips hung low,
why my pace was slowed.
I replied,
“everything else makes me want to die.”
Your eyes were wide
digesting
the drama you didn’t sign up to see.
I would find in time,
how little
you believed
in me.
All you bought
at Costco that day
you already got,
time and time
again.
Shopping the artist out of you
is all you could do
to keep your bloodstream
from screaming at you
to run
from your self-shackled
chains.
Then you gently,
lovingly,
thoughtlessly,
relentlessly,
shrieked at me
to break my brushes;
clean my messes;
learn my lessons;
bludgeon my art with the barrel of a gun.
Today you told me, “don’t forget to have fun.”
