[608] Keys

crit

I wish there were a switch to turn off my brain. Someone could make a key, small and golden, which would slot into the shell of my ear, the jaw would be the hinges, and my skull would open up onto the pinkness controlling all my thoughts and feelings and, in the middle or somewhere more prominent, there would be a switch or a button that anyone could activate, if they only had the key. My thoughts, they get stuck, sometimes. I think I need a way to reboot them, clear out my memory files, delete the storage—I mean, scan through the good ones and keep those and clear out the bad ones.

I’d keep the key somewhere safe. You wouldn’t want to keep it in a pocket or wear it on a necklace or put it anywhere too close to you because what if someone figured out what it did and decided to open me up and look inside? Would my thoughts unfurl in a reel of film playing out the movie of who I am? Because I don’t want anyone else to see inside. They would find all the not nice things I think and then the thoughts—the ones always getting so stuck—they would latch onto whoever dared to venture onto my garden pathways and forever trap that someone else who dared to look.

My grandfather left me a giant ring of keys. Where do they go? Probably nowhere, anymore, but I pull out the ring and flick through the metal and imagine fun destinations. The little one cast in bronze with its teeth so ornately carved belonged to a French woman who met the guillotine during the revolution. This one that’s all black would open up the head of a serial killer confined to death row and his victims could have the confession the courts never wrenched from his teeth. After all, the black one would have to belong to someone pretty bad. There’s a gold one that never seems to lose its polish. I’ve created the most storied around that one, when I wake up in the middle of the night with all of the stuck thoughts, because it’s so perfect and, try as I might, I can’t conjure anyone who would fit that perfection.

Once, I met a guy who worked at a funeral home. I asked him how many sets of keys the families delivered with the bodies. He got a little cagey, like that was an unusual question to ask, and said he’d never seen a key in his life then ran off. I think about it sometimes: the sweat beading at his temple; the wrinkles on his shirt he smoothed out when I mentioned the keys; the clop of his shoes when he turned and hurried away; how his jacket splayed out behind him and how I could have grabbed on instead of letting him leave; how the jacket would shrug off his shoulders and I’d be left with the remnants of my questions and no answers. It’s those kinds of thoughts, I’m sure everyone has them, that I’d like to delete, if I could.

Because the last thing I need to be thinking about is keys. Not when I’m sitting here, all decked out in black, curling paper back and forth in my palm, letting the swoosh-swoosh of it calm my nerves and drip into my brain, drown out the thoughts. A key would be a nice thing to have. I’d rather get a look at the perfect pinkness inside me than be here, swoosh-swooshing.

“Did you hear me, Michael?”

“I’d rather not.”

I would delete this moment, too.