The year of reading about Freud
being an endearing fuck-up. The year
of innermost list building, list looking.
The year of friends falling and the year
of learning to walk in the snow so also
the year of really seeing your feet move
for the first time. Your feet and nothing
else making a muffled crunch as they
drop away. The year of admitting money
might have played a part; of reading
that Freud was in love with his drug
dealer. But where did you read that
and how could anyone know such
a thing? The last year of the penny
and the year before a new pin
for each card. The year of lying
as wishful thinking, of willing
the indignity down and watching
it bob back up, no matter how much
worthless copper put in its pockets.
The year of more disastrous magic
and Freud inventing narcissism
as a diagnosis for clients resistant
to analysis. The lost year. The year
of augmentation and of associating
olive oil with bananas. The last year
of olive oil and bananas; of carelessly
constructing the memory of olive oil
and bananas—of unlived lives lived
alongside an arbitrary month amount
that drags at each end. Sluggish fantasies,
erotic or not: drowning swimmers flailing
their arms to grasp their rescuer, dragging
the lifeguard down with them. The year of
redefining infection: germs as pessimism,
the unconscious things said that are only
audible when the audio is reversed.
The year of living fundamentally,
the old believers returning to Siberia
only to be discovered by geologists
forty years later and die of exposure
to diseases they had no immunity to,
diseases they fled but were found by.
The year of falling out of love with Freud
and the year of summoning the strength
to tell him to find his coke elsewhere now;
of Freud, wandering from chemist to chemist,
really seeing his feet move for the first time.