On Mess

Essay 12

I run a clean house, my friends, my shirts are pressed and crisp. I’m never out of fresh spoons, or socks, my softener’s the good-smelling kind, it makes the neighbours turn. The furniture sit parallel, my vase well-placed, an art.

We tidy things so they don’t change; we say we like to see the children grow, that we’re moved by the planted seed, but that’s a lie.

Change is too messy for April Fridays—starts and ends are messy. Working and fighting and changing is messy. Success is messy, sex is messy, complex and stressy, you spill, you spit, you bleed. The non-Newtonian liquid-you all eager to obtrude, and to change shapes, and dry. What a rude mess to die!

The dust stops mid-air as I lie back on the carpet in a room that’s clearly changed. I let it be, I let it be strange. The particles are visible, a friendly memo: that’s the MO.