THE SQUIRREL

Almost half a year of it and I still don’t trust my pain. I am dully unsure of it, though it defines my daily meter. I am commonly debilitated – in the morning, when standing or walking for any amount of time, after meals – but sometimes I am aware of a thin yet established skepticism within myself. Now, as I think about it directly, I can know without question that I am wracked by incessant discomfort. But when I find myself dwelling on it below the surface of my conscious thoughts, indirectly, there is the squirrel. Is it fake, has all of this been staged? 

On the first floor of our house in Chicago there was a small windowless room that shared no walls with the outdoors; it was an entirely interior room. One day I opened the door to that room and there was a squirrel.