300(ish) Words on the Process of Quitting
93 degrees in Houston this morning. The typewriter twitches with the suggestion of an idea.
Agitated as soda fizz, I pace throughout the house from room to room, listening to podcasts,
listening to the parade of birds outside. I think in scales and proximities. I eat sour candies and
rubberneck at the sight of a car split in two on the side of the road, the car smashed as though
caught by the fist of some senseless God. I take the world too personally. I watch the same movie
twice over; something about Nicole Kidman frightens me. I want things. I want to be fed sugar
and apricots like a Lord; to be tended to by beautiful women; to be the last mobster out on the tip
of Manhattan as the lights lower; to plunge into a dark, dark lake. I want to be shot in a prairie
dress. I want the Easter Bunny to appear before me, erect and full of sweetness and luck. And
the doorbell shatters through the room like a fallen chandelier. The hardest part of letting go is
the flight. How long until you land? How long until something else? My search history reads like
a binge: best pedal exerciser; high protein breakfast ideas; Elvis official movie site; infinite jest
pdf; goodbye stress gummies; Nicole smith page six; pearl necklace; double bind wikipedia;
horse textile; twenty-five rare Kennedy assassination photos; cancel New Yorker subscription. I
shrink beneath the sun in the yard and pay penance for my thoughts. Good old penance. I think
of Albert Ayler, the grandmaster of bebop, grandfather of sound with his kinks and departures
and nomads and winding scales; his music tinkles. How he was haunted by dreams of the
celestial. How you can indeed be haunted by heaven. I hold my hands together, and I pray for
rain.
Jasmine Ledesma lives in Brooklyn. Her work has appeared or is set to appear in places like
Borderlands, Vice, Rattle and [PANK] among others. Her work was also nominated for both
Best of The Net and the Pushcart Prize in 2020. She was recently awarded a fellowship with
Brooklyn Poets.
June 15, 2022
In "300 Words on..."
