vertigo 56 mensah demary major depression and dysthymia. We last met in August—you, me, and my wife. Anyway, I’d like to schedule an appointment. I’d like to return to therapy. It’s not depression. It’s—well—I’m having marital problems and I need to talk them out. Let me know if you have any openings. My number is (609)-XXX- XXXX. Thanks. I know how this day will end because I know how it began. I woke up late and I woke up alone and on my phone, there was a message— I’ll be home this morning to pick up the rest of my stuff— And though it is Friday and I’m supposed to see Junot Diaz read and discuss lovely, writely topics, I know I’ll miss the event and I won’t want to go home so I’ll go to the bookstore and blend in with the coffee-drinkers and earbud-wearers and work on my literary magazine on my iPad until the sun goes down, down, down—then I’ll go home and see most of her stuff picked up and hauled out. The kitchen will be clean, the bed made, various papers and mail neatly piled on the floating shelf next to the television [our last project completed together] and she’ll leave a note on my keyboard in the office and in that note, she brrrrreaks me. So I’ll head into the kitchen and open a bottle of wine and I’ll turn on my Apple TV and stream the saddest album ever created from my com- puter to my TV and I’ll drink the whole bottle in the dark [dark dark] while listening to this album, the saddest of all time, until I puke onto the floor and the recliner and again in the toilet and the red wine puke will stain my pillowcase and I’ll call Elle—I will not be above drunk calling—and I’ll pass out. But— Before all of that, I schedule my return to therapy and pull into the factory’s parking lot, now ten minutes late, and it hasn’t hit me yet. The fierce, relentless reality looms behind my back. This feeling, this issue with slippage. My marriage and my employment, the stability that is my life, shifts as swift as quicksilver and, behind the wheel, now fifteen minutes late, vertigo approaches. Time remaining (as of November 27th, 2011): 0 years 7 months 2 days Author: Mensah’s fiction & nonfic- tion has appeared in Up The Staircase, Monkeybicycle, Hippocampus Maga- zine, and is forthcoming in PANK Magazine, 4’33” and Used Furniture Review. He is also a regular contribu- tor for PANK Magazine’s blog. He is co-founder and Editor-in-Chief of Specter Literary Magazine. ps+ ps

56 ps march 2012 demary vertigo2

Download PDF Report

Upload
peripheral-surveys
View
213
Download
0

Tags:

Embed Size (px)

DESCRIPTION

Citation preview

Page 1: 56 ps march 2012 demary vertigo2

vertigo56

mensah demary

major depression and dysthymia. We last met in August—you, me, and my wife. Anyway, I’d like to schedule an appointment. I’d like to return to therapy. It’s not depression. It’s—well—I’m having marital problems and I need to talk them out. Let me know if you have any openings. My number is (609)-XXX-XXXX. Thanks.

I know how this day will end because I know how it began. I woke up late and I woke up alone and on my phone, there was a message—

I’ll be home this morning to pick up the rest of my stuff—

And though it is Friday and I’m supposed to see Junot Diaz read and discuss lovely, writely topics, I know I’ll miss the event and I won’t want to go home so I’ll go to the bookstore and blend in with the coffee-drinkers and earbud-wearers and work on my literary magazine on my iPad until the sun goes down, down, down—then I’ll go home and see most of her stuff picked up and hauled out. The kitchen will be clean, the bed made, various papers and mail neatly piled on the floating shelf next to the television [our last project completed together] and she’ll leave a note on my keyboard in the office and in that note, she brrrrreaks me. So I’ll head into the kitchen and open a bottle of wine and I’ll turn on my Apple TV and stream the saddest album ever created from my com-puter to my TV and I’ll drink the whole bottle in the dark [dark dark] while listening to this album, the saddest of all time, until I puke onto the floor and the recliner and again in the toilet and the red wine puke will stain my pillowcase and I’ll call Elle—I will not be above drunk calling—and I’ll pass out.

But—

Before all of that, I schedule my return to therapy and pull into the factory’s parking lot, now ten minutes late, and it hasn’t hit me yet. The fierce, relentless reality looms behind my back. This feeling, this issue with slippage. My marriage

and my employment, the stability that is my life, shifts as swift as quicksilver and, behind the wheel, now fifteen min-utes late, vertigo approaches.

Time remaining (as of November 27th, 2011):0 years

7 months2 days

Author:

Mensah’s fiction & nonfic-tion has appeared in Up The Staircase, Monkeybicycle, Hippocampus Maga-zine, and is forthcoming in PANK Magazine, 4’33” and Used Furniture Review. He is also a regular contribu-tor for PANK Magazine’s blog. He is co-founder and Editor-in-Chief of Specter Literary Magazine.

ps+ps