Object / David Porter

Each and every item I could think to describe felt transitory to me suddenly. My computer, my car, my desk, the room I sat in; all of them conditional and fleeting. Had my life slowly receded from me, I wondered, backing away on tip toes from the lumbering and confused mess I'd somehow become? As it crept away, did it pick up the trinkets collected in life and brush the smell of me away? Or was I the one slowly distancing and disassociating myself, waiting for some other, owner-less shoe to drop? Have I changed so much recently that the things I'd used and cared for, or at least grudgingly up kept become so foreign to me? Either way, I couldn't think of a single item in my possession that I actually felt I owned or knew. Each felt borrowed, someone else's something-or-others, items I live beside or around or behind, rather than with or in control of. It didn't help that I couldn't read what I was writing, my words spilling across the screen in an alien smear-- shortstop? shoes flop? What was it I'd said? It's somewhere behind me now, with all of those things, all of those things I keep but don't own, not yet, not until or unless I somehow recognize them again.

I wish I had my glasses, though. That much I can tell you.