NOTEPADS

I always wanted to make stationery or notepads out of
restaurant checks

you know, those numbered sheets they use to take your order
at diners

but when I looked online the only places I could buy them were
restaurant supply stores

so you had to buy them in bulk like you were, ya know,
a restaurant

and I wasn’t going to order, like, a thousand notepads for my
tiny apartment

but! one website did offer to send a sample, which again, was a sample
in bulk

and this is a silly analogy but you’ll see the point
about proportions

like, if an elephant went to a restaurant and ordered
a sample of wine

they’d pour the elephant, like a full gallon of wine
so anyway

all this to say that I got mailed an entire box of restaurant checks and I use
them to make lists

and they’ve lasted me years, even though I was the type of
compulsive list-maker

who would do a thing, write it on a list, then cross it out just to prove
that I did a thing

until one year I got so depressed that I stopped making lists
because

the only
two things I could do were the only two things I had to do

which were get out of bed
and brush my teeth (and sometimes I didn’t even brush my teeth)

and I was afraid
I’d do something bad to myself so I’d text you and you’d come over

and we’d
make grilled cheese or just sit on the kitchen floor and breathe

and I guess
that’s what it means to need someone and I can’t seem to find

those notepads anywhere.

Ben Kassoy is all the birds in Minnesota, who come down from the trees and lace up their tiny skates and glide across the frozen lakes every winter night. More at www.benkassoy.com.