Hard Things Small and Large

[Prompt: What bothers you and why?]

I’d say that the heat bothers me but I’m resigned to it.

Weak coffee bothers me, nearly as much as coffee not being hot enough. On the topic of coffee, flavored creamers bother me. A lot. Like hazelnut. Why does coffee which has a plenty distinctive taste need hazelnut creamer? This could be a live and let live situation unless there is only hazelnut creamer. This has happened to me.

It bothers me that our neighbor is cultivating two giant weeds, hoping, maybe to turn them into trees since he is one of the very few houses on our block without his own city-provided tree in front of his house. The other day, surreptitiously, another neighbor snuck over and pruned the first neighbor’s weeds, leaving only the two giant stalks, stuffing the cuttings into a lawn refuse bag so fast and so furtively that you’d think a getaway car was waiting round the block.

It bothers me that no dog sleeps on the floor next to my bed anymore. The ghost of Swirl lays curled under the window but Tempest, the living dog, has eschewed me in favor of the mister. I wake in the night to see bare floor where just days ago there was my pack.

Powerlessness bothers me. Seeing and hearing abhorrent things on the news – immigrants being tackled on the street, internment camps being built with glee, American-run facilities serving food with maggots and guards watching ‘detainees’ empty jammed up toilets with their hands. Loving America bothers me. And yes, Cory Booker, she has broken my heart. Is breaking my heart. Every day.

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Photo by Daniel Lincoln on Unsplash