THE INANIMATE

Why is everything awake I look ahead of my laptop and my brother’s toy car faces me I contemplate on the toilet seat and the tap faces me And everything’s awake Why is everything awake They are my mother’s watchful assistants her consciousness rings through them, on me I know the fish tires when it makes the ‘O’ mouth And mine does too, because I am a fish too Though no one ever mentions it tires the bin too the one in my room with those brown strips and the bottle’s mouth, and the pan’s mouth too But, either they are booing or saying whoop whoop

That dummy cat who stared hard in the toy shop, thought the summers are too hot this year, and the inanimate objects are dying but I jerked back and ran away

Everything is staring and there are ostrich eyes, millions of them Fixed in the clock’s nose and the tips of the rose I feel seen that same way all the time when I enter the class late, and time slaps me in the face my fate says boo, it yells ”shoo you fool” No one finds kindred souls anymore Because all those eyes that pop in those chocolate shaped candies have stolen their hearts, or maybe, I should say brains Perhaps those glowing facades have hypnotic spirals for eyes That have made my sisters and friends get humps at 18

I am content with my animate spectators Where I get tired out of yelling at the backs of people all day, they listen forcing aloofness and apathy to look “nonchalant” is, I fear, only the art of inanimate objects also known as ‘THE Humans’ If I’d yell in the waves of people they’d say I am crazy — the only thing they’d say right, and continue to be bent, may God have mercy on their necks

The other day I was talking to the bread I bought from the store and a man came sliding, almost torn at my feet, my bread wished me to take him to the cobbler’s and get him stitches I had to repay for its company

That’s how your distant author found a kindred spirit out of an inanimate object and I think I love this one more so than my older ones