you can start anywhere, you’ll still hit all the service stations

the laptop bag is red, i got it for free from a friend who got it for free. new things are not all that common, i suppose. my neighbours speak portuguese, the calathea loses another leaf. the heatwave runs like an old fridge, the old fridge is mostly empty, droning. 

we watch the tennis. how fast is that little green blur? could whip me interstate and i’d get there by midday. what a game. and poor old medvedev but he’s such a good sport. knows what it’s like to be caught in a feedback loop. takes it on the chin like a hero. droning, we watch the tennis but mostly i am elsewhere: my parents’ blue micra, the upstairs bedroom, yesterday, the week after next. the walls start talking to each other. we fill the boxes with books and fodder. the carpets become useless, the apartment echoes. when i left home i brought a tin box of objects i’d been saving: coasters, a fridge magnet, plastic stars that glow in the dark. eighteen year-old items i mistook for bricks. my parents have a brown briefcase and my birth certificate is inside. it’s hidden in their house somewhere but where exactly? that’s a secret. i have a laptop bag by the fireplace, i put important things in there too. and a bench in the living room and a basket of medicine above the fridge. and the bathmat hangs where it always does, but this time it is brown.