Yesterday

           All night the fan purred into my left ear, whipping my wax into a tangle of dead skin and wires. When I woke up, it felt like all my pain had condensed into a sickly coin, now lodged in my ear canal. Infant mewling and finger sucking ensued. I tried to sleep on my bad side, the right, the side I could never fall asleep on but apparently once I was unconscious, my body found it more bearable. My ear flared like a watchfire. I tried flipping sides, but it hurt even worse pressed against the pillow, and the possibility of falling back asleep grew more remote. My eyes were heavy— pregnant. I turned to my phone for some answers, googling “my left ear hurts,” hoping the left ears of the world would tell me of their troubles. I tried every suggestion I came across, one of which was a shower. The world said it would loosen my sinuses, and a warm shower sounded like sweet temporary relief from the throbbing in my eardrum. It happened quickly, or not at all. I was asleep again. Yet waking up again only brought more pain.

            I’ve slept in. Somehow, though my dysfunctional ear forced me awake at sunrise, and I went through the usual morning motions well before my time, I overslept my alarm by about eight minutes. I cursed, because losing eight minutes threw the whole delicate carousel of morning into a tizzy. There was no coffee in the kitchen— or much of anything, except assorted breads and a lone pack of ground beef— so I had grown used to walking to the gas station before catching the bus toward my obligations. This was now out of the question. Miffed and mostly suffering, I rush out the door to make the bus in time. In light of what I had been denied, I allow myself a cigarette just before hopping on the bus. Allowing myself— as if permission factored into it. I daydream of smoke melting the lead in my ear into ash. Ten months ago some guy hauling the garbage saw me lighting up and dropped his trash to come talk to me. He seemed apologetic— but not enough, apparently— when he told me he had nearly died of lung cancer. He was banking on something, clearly— not on my interest in his life, probably, but my interest in my own. A gamble worth his minutes, I reckon. I skipped through the better chunk of a year cig-free and on the verge of an even bigger turnaround. Sadly that castle went crashing. Wonder where he is now. The big gift to myself is foul and arid— whoever had a cigarette in the morning without a coffee, and with death in the ear?

               Some mornings, even those void of their usual comforts, the window out the bus scrolls like one rolling poem. The quaint storefronts become gradually more dilapidated. I squint to catch a new name on a tombstone as we pass the cemetery. The bigger stones are easier to read. Then, eventually, the scene becomes grass and ranch and open space, proudly marked off, praising its openness. Rusty playground and farming equipment loiter in yards that wrap around for acres. The church’s sign reads, “It’s Not Difficult to get to Heaven.” The way to the church, however, looks overwrought with weeds and bushes. A few fields over, a man stands by himself in the middle of the grass. His black garb makes him easy to spot and hard to ignore. He doesn’t seem engaged in any sort of labor— nothing to harvest in this heat anyway. He just stood there, stuck between a sea of sky and grass. Nearby, the bulls shoved each other for room. One little calf danced around the outskirts of the herd. My eyes fell dark.

            This happened. That much I know for certain. This was yesterday. I’m pretty sure it was yesterday. Only thing about that claim— this also happened today. The cauldron in my ear stirs. Skin’s gone clammy and caked with sweat. Have you seen my yesterday?  The scrolling, one field flowing into the next, has lost its edges, any sense of boundary. The day they call this— it’s a sound I’ve never tasted before. The old man with his Target hat and badge, playing air guitar with his stout fingers, won’t stop looking in my direction. Maybe he’s casting a psychedelic spell. What happened to yesterday? It feels like I’ve been on this bus all morning. I look up toward the mountains expecting them to be so much closer than they are. A westward road no longer. I’ve maybe fallen asleep, and the dream has succeeded in picking up wherever I left off. I clutch for a cup of coffee, grabbing the skin of the man suddenly sitting next to me. Stop requested. I would like to get off. Over the fields, the lifted eyelids of the sky have a purple hue. Bells are singing. Acres away from where I saw the man in black garb, in the distant center of the tall grass, there he was again. Except this time, I’m beginning to see, he is holding the calf. I didn’t know what he was going to do with it, until I did. Then my ear popped, a splash of blood burst from my nose, and my throat contracted to scream, but my body couldn’t spare the sound.