Gifts

In the summer of 2018, a dishwasher at the Asian-American restaurant I worked at gave me a fish wrapped in tin foil. He tapped me on the shoulder and nodded towards the back room, where we would prep vegetables. A few months before this, he told me about fluoride for the first time, about the pineal gland shrinking up like a decaying mouse, that’s what he said, like one of these mice down here, they start with abundance, they’re juicy and ignorant, ready to conquer the world. Over time, they see too much, they take too many risks, they grow old, die, become brittle and fragile. He snapped his fingers, Like your brain.

He told me about turmeric in my coffee, he told me about six saffron threads a day, he told me about salt, vinegar, the sun, real basic things on a whole new spectrum. I took this all very seriously, we would work late into the evening and after clocking out I would go to the gym near my house, lift weights and run on the treadmill for twenty minutes. I would imagine myself in some snowy place, Siberia maybe, just running, training, for something, for life or for death, I wanted to be ready, something was coming and I knew it, so did my coworker, few others did. I would write down all of my vitamin intake for the week, calculating the grams, the percentages, the food type. Beside each, I would write, Adequate, or, Optimize.

It went on like this for a while, the two of us chasing some hyper-libidinous existence. In the back room, the fish was resting on the steel table. We walked over and he placed it in my hands, he looked me in the eyes, it appeared to me as a just-born creature, something precious, something he was trusting me with. It felt heavy in the foil, I looked down and saw myself scattered in thousands of tiny mirrors, barely a form, it was momentous, this was important. I opened the foil at a stoplight on the way to the gym, the scales glowing red, the stench already filling the car.

In late spring of 2021, I was given a small prayer rug by a carpet dealer I had befriended in Istanbul. He gave me coffee and slices of an apple and said, The whole world is in this city, you could find a beautiful wife here, you could find two beautiful wives here, you could learn to trust yourself, build your harem. There was another man in the shop who sat with us, an elderly man from western Africa who enjoyed telling me about the rape of the world at the hands of America. Rape. That’s what he said. He held the same slice of apple the entire time, I could see it browning, we were dying, all three of us in there. In each corner of the rug, there was a small bloody dagger woven into it.

In November of 2023, I was given a rock, a Lapis Lazuli, now sitting on a table in my living room. I pick it up sometimes, make a fist around the smooth surface and let the deep blue peak through my fingers. The girl who gave it to me said it would help me become more truthful. This little rock, the whole ocean in my fist, what is the truth going to do for anybody?

Two months ago, I was given a postcard with a picture of an old Carolina mansion on the front. Dusk, a pond, the windows glowing yellow. I stared at it for a long time, what the fuck am I doing here, what the fuck am I doing here? There is a wife in this mansion, there are four kids, there is a roast and a garden and a greenhouse. I turned it over and on the back, someone had written a poem about love. At least that is how I interpreted it,. It started, We are all born as dogs and we all have a gun in our hand.

Yesterday, I was given a parking ticket, forty-four dollars. I sat on the curb with my book beside me, defeated, watching the weird bodies move about. A man approached me and asked if I was reading poetry, I told him no, I assumed he was hitting on me, I told him that I don’t believe in poets.

___

Drew Mosman lives in Washington State. His writing can be found on drewrmosman.com.