Temporary

by Hilary Leichter

With trusty carpal alchemy they knead my resume into a series of paychecks that constitute a life.

“There are only a few kinds of jobs in the world, it turns out,” says the captain, who is the type to pontificate and listicle on subjects varied and profound. “Jobs on land,” he continues, “jobs at sea, jobs in the sky, jobs of the mind, and working remotely.” “You mean like working from home?” I ask. “No,” the pirate captain says. “Working remotely is what we call being dead. Pirate lingo.”

It takes an aggressive empathy to accurately replace a person. A person is a tangle of nerves and veins and relationships, and one must untangle the tangle like repairing a knotted necklace and wrap oneself at the center of the mess.

I think of my many available selves, coagulated and discrete, compromising themselves for one another.

Life is a stranger in a crowd whose intentions are unclear and, come to think of it, so is death.

I try to find comfort with lying every day, practicing mostly on myself.

I could be happy and sad. It’s the way I can multitask, it’s the way two feelings can be the same feeling. It’s the way a rash and a willow can both weep.

Getting older is the difference between solving mysteries and studying to become one.

She noted the fallacy of permanence in a world where everything ends and desired that kind of permanence all the same.