< my eventual bloodless coup / by ofelia hunt >

it is flat there and you will be happier

I want to stop wanting things.

I lean my head against my television and feel the static tingle my hair follicles. I say to my boyfriend, "You should go to Kansas or something. It is flat there, and you will be happier."

"I'm going to get ice cream," he says.

He has little black eyes and he stares at me with them.

I say, "You're just hiding your emotional devastation with ice cream. If you drove to the beach and watched the ocean with your little black eyes you would understand and go to Kansas like I told you and you would go to the zoo and look at penguins swimming and you would contemplate swimming penguins and you would be happier."

He goes to get ice cream.

I clean all the dishes by hand. I dry them with a towel, then turn on the radio. I walk into the bathroom and shut the door and sit down on the toilet. I stand up and open the door and walk into the kitchen. I spray the counters with spray cleaner and wipe them down with paper towels. I walk into the living room and sit on the couch and listen to the radio. I listen to commercials. The commercial for wine is very funny. I don't like the other commercials. I stand up and walk to the window and look out the window. My neighbor is looking through her window at me so I wave but she doesn't wave back. I walk into the kitchen and sit on the floor and lay down on the floor and feel the floor's cold through the back of my T-shirt.

My boyfriend returns with ice cream.

"What are you doing?" he asks.

"Contemplating my current subject position and how it orders my perceptions, bearing in mind that shifting contexts will eventually alter both subject position and perception, or something."

"Do you want some ice cream?" My boyfriend smiles and shows me the ice cream in a large round tub. He opens the ice cream and shows me the ice cream directly. "It's good."

I nod. I will eat the ice cream. Then I will drive to Kansas and find a cornfield and drive my little hatchback out into the cornfield and abandon my hatchback in the cornfield and walk north through the cornfield until I find a cow. Then I will sit down and think about the zoo and maybe call my boyfriend on my cell-phone and tell him to drive to the ocean and contemplate the ocean and maybe contemplate nothingness and to email me his observations of the ocean and nothingness so I can carefully analyze them.