the list goes back to somewhere i cannot locate in the calendar anymore—
it holds the plumber from the pipe thing and the doctor and a floor-
to-ceiling inventory of everything i’ve promised to attend to
since the last time i was the organized kind—the end to
all that started around the time i started saying soon,
which is the list’s primary language, the borrowed afternoon
of intention: the check-up, the email to the guy about the thing,
the thank-you note for something that was kind, the full accounting ring
of everything i’m owed by and owe to and intend to square.
the list knows me better than i do.
it’s got an entry i wrote half-awake
in the nowhere between one and three—
it says “the blr.” for the sake
of whatever i meant that night.
i’ve left it standing like a stone
monument to mystery, something i haven’t disowned
in seven months because deleting the unknown feels wrong,
feels like erasing something that might matter, might belong
to the better version of this list someone finishes some weekend—
a six-am, decisive, fully-reckoned human. message: pending.
this is the catalog of tension
between the person i was going to be by now
and the current version, somehow
still adding three new items every other afternoon
without removing anything.
the list plays the one note of deferred—
the only song it knows.
it grows.
it will take a motivated weekend,
a version of myself with coffee and momentum, extended
across two full days of execution.
i have the list.
the list has me.
the point: don’t miss.