No One Home - July 25 2022

 

No One Home

July 25 2022

Signature required.

The convenience of home delivery

for the preternaturally patient

with time on their hands.

But my signature

is nothing much.

So really, what is there to trust

in this inscrutable scrawl

which could easily be anyone?

I remember grade school,

head closely bent

pen tightly gripped

one eye squinting,

labouring over my autograph

as though signing my life away.

Each cursive letter

carefully shaped,

a few extravagant flourishes

to make it my own.

And as I got older

how it decomposed,

degenerating

into a slurred featureless scrawl;

the novelty

of affixing my moniker

that had become a tiresome chore.

They say a bad signature

is an early sign of dementia,

the unsteady hand

the formlessness.

So is this the beginning of the end?

Am I entering my dotage?

Am I just too old to care?

A signature

to secure the transaction.

Turns out, I never got it

and assume it was returned to sender.

The post office,

a revolving door

where packages come and go

while never changing hands.

Merchandise circling the globe

getting nowhere fast.