A Bitch Gone In The Teeth

I realize, now, that I am trying to explain to my mother, who lives in Kenya, that the United States has become unlivable for me. And perhaps it has always been unlivable—that last straw goes unnoticed because the camel’s back is often useless long before it, even as useless is not the same thing as overused. If I had once felt the need to live a life that does not present itself as inevitable, now I wonder what it is to live a life in which my parents’ dreams for me are no longer urgent (I blame John for this!). As with everything, I have come to this way too late. I owe Ezra Pound my sense of timeliness versus lateness, and for the notion that this botched civilization continues to stymie my life.