Morning Ritual
by Jonathan Yungkans
Open the front door at six a.m. See if the dead still stir. They never keep to a regular schedule.
Swallow hard to move sinus pain from skull. Keep swallowing. Eventually, it might work.
Walk into bathroom. Splash face and back of neck with cold water. Whatever you do, don’t breathe. Gasp for oxygen, your face buried in a towel, once you’ve finished.
Do not notice the dead, laughing.
Make coffee. Two rounded scoops of grounds, three cups water, and who knows how much gravel from ancient water pipes.
Close eyes. Thank God the neighbors are quiet. They dragged trashcans along their driveway, dropped boxes from their second-floor balcony—all of this well after midnight. Hopefully, not even the dead are up over there. Purple nightshade twists through chain link, the fence one solid bloom; the vine has wrapped itself around the plum tree in a backyard shotgun wedding.
Pour coffee. Take it black. Sip. Feel tiny gravestones down your throat.
Notice seven large parrots perched on a line between two phone poles. Their feathers glow green, brighter than money.
Fill large salad bowl with Cheerios. Add milk. Shovel mechanically into mouth.
Do not notice the parrots are now shiny black, look more like falcons.
Ingest two pills of sanity—one nightshade purple, one bleached bone—and a multivitamin, just in case you should live so long as to enjoy that sanity, whenever it might come—you’re pretty sure it’s not going to be today. The pills feel like larger chunks of gravestone going down.
Do not count the parrots. Do not notice there are only five now, or the two large splatter patterns below them, like when liquid-filled balloons are dropped from high above.
Drink more coffee. Keep drinking. There is only so much solace in the world.
Previously appeared in The Chachalaca Review, Vol. 5 (Fall 2019)
PHOTO: Lost Conure, Tarzan by Nancy L. Stockdale, used by permission.
NOTE FROM THE AUTHOR: This is how to get through the morning on days I have to force one foot in front of the other. This happens a lot more often than I let on. The weights of depression and unreal expectations for myself can be crushing in themselves. Together, they become almost unbearable. Thank God for coffee.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR: Jonathan Yungkans is a Los Angeles-based writer and photographer who earned an MFA from California State University, Long Beach, while working as an in-home health-care provider. His work has appeared in San Pedro Poetry Review, Synkroniciti, West Texas Literary Review, and other publications. His second poetry chapbook, Beneath a Glazed Shimmer, won the 2019 Clockwise Chapbook Prize and is upcoming from Tebor Bach Publishing.
Silver Birch Press 