The Grind

Three mini ciabattini for breakfast where demand for persnickety bread is small, hence its expense, hence my steadfast recalculation of my overhead, which soars, and as you might expect the ciabattini stand in for my fantasy of myself in a sea-limned prospect, on a terrace, with a lemon tree... Not: Assessed a fee for rent sent a day late. Not: Fines accrued for a lost library book. Better never lose track of the date. Oversleep, and you’re on the hook. It’s the margin for error: shrinking. It’s life ground down to recurrence. It’s fewer books read for the thinking the hospital didn’t rebill the insurance; the school misplaced the kids’ paperwork. Here’s our sweet pup, a rescue which we nonetheless paid for, and look: he gets more grooming than I do. When I turn my hand mill, I think of the dowager who ground gems on ham for her guests; the queen who ground out two cups of flour on the pregnant abdomen of her husband’s mistress; I think of a “great rock-eating bird” grinding out a sandy beach, the foam said to be particulate matter of minute crustaceans, each brilliantly spooning up Aphrodite to Greek porticoes, and our potatoes, and plain living which might be shaken by infinitesimal tattoos.