Thoughts from being home alone and incompetent.

By Alyssa Hinkston

There was, sitting on the counter until about twenty minutes ago, a sealed glass container of spaghetti sauce that molded. I intended to throw it away two days ago, but things had gotten in the way, I forgot, and at current moment I am left to my own devices in an empty house. Nothing get’s done in the house unless I do it. The papers on the living-room floor? Mine. The dishes in the sink? Mine. The lamp left on in the hallway burning my eyes at night until I begrudgingly leave the warm covers to flick it off while muttering obscenities? Also, mine. I’ve never been very good at taking care of myself. Once left alone in the house I leave my bedroom to live a hermetic life upstairs where there are more windows. Left alone in my own mind I do the same. I leave one thought for a later day, and like a lamp in the night it will bother me until I go find the source and deal with it. All this to say, I think our minds are like houses and we are alone in here. Watching our spaghetti sauce emotions turn into a terrifying petri dish of wondering “what could this turn into”? What happens when we let things decompose a little? Strangely when I opened the glass container, it only smelled like spaghetti sauce. Maybe the decomposing, the deconstructing will spoil like dairy, or maybe we’ll have fine wines to share with friends on a fall afternoon. Maybe we can learn to rinse the milk before it sits, to leave some things be that we throw away later, and certain things we save in the dark cellars until the time is perfect to bring it into the light.