Your place is a pigsty and I caught you drinking out of a bowl earlier. I caught you drinking out of a bowl for want of a clean cup or mug. I caught you drinking your organic, fair-trade, flat white coffee out of a bowl. And I caught you eating your filet mignon off the back of a brown cardboard box, a soggy cardboard box with a shipping label from Amazon.com. For want of a clean plate, you placed your filet mignon right on top of the Amazon Prime sticker, and ate your steak right off the back of that box. And I caught you eating your Tiramisu coffee cake, lovingly homemade at the local bakery, off the back of a groundhog. Off the back of a live groundhog, no less. Off the back of a live groundhog that emerged from the pile of discarded paper towels and rags and cardboard boxes and empty soup cans and Coke cans and bottles and disposable plastic microwave meal bowls, all piled up in the corner on the floor in your kitchen, long since having overflown their individual recycling bins, themselves long since submerged by the sea of trash and recyclables atop them. I saw a groundhog come out of that pile; it came out of the pile, languidly, and appeared to yawn. Then it scratched its ear a few times with its rear leg. It sauntered up to you, apparently no worries in the world, and its little nose began sniffing and its little whiskers began twitching, and it walked up to you as you held the Tiramisu carton in your hands and looked around the kitchen for a clean plate. But there was nary a clean plate anywhere to be seen, for the kitchen sink overflowed with dirty plates with dried-on, crusted-on food, some of it sprouting those little forests of mold that emit a gray-green gossamer cloud when you disturb them. I saw that groundhog saunter up to you and then offer up its back, and I saw you crouch down and delicately place a piece of Tiramisu on it. You left the kitchen and walked toward your couch; you paused, and looked back over your shoulder, and the groundhog, who hadn’t yet moved, looked to you. You nodded, and the groundhog trotted after you. You resumed walking toward your couch and plopped yourself down amidst the crumpled T-shirts with the yellow pit stains and the torn chocolate bar wrappers that you swept to the floor with the back of your hand as you plopped down on your couch. The little guy trotted up to the couch and stopped. He stopped at the base of the couch and almost tripped over a banana peel, black and yellow and desiccated, which he momentarily looked down at and sniffed with his little blueberry nose. He looked up at you with his knowing brown hazelnut eyes, so dark and glossy and reflective that you can see your reflection in them. You gave him a nod, a little micro-nod, and he crouched low on his hind legs, and, like a slinky played in reverse, slowly coiled himself up and, with the speed of molasses, sprung up onto your couch and nestled into a little ball beside you, careful not to spill the Tiramisu. And you grabbed a cane that was leaning against your couch, and you used it to hook the television remote, which was on the broad wooden coffee table in front of you, just out of reach of your hand. You hooked the television remote using the handle of the wooden cane, a relic from your grandfather’s day that was signed by none other than Winston Churchill for some reason; you used the handle of the wooden cane to hook the television remote and drag it toward you. You dragged it to the edge of the coffee table, but not carefully enough, for the television remote tumbled to the rug on the floor underneath the coffee table. The groundhog looked to you with his dark knowing eyes, and you looked to him, and he waited for the nod, but you didn’t nod. Instead, you stretched out your leg, and you stretched out your foot, and you leaned with your leg as far as your leg could lean, and you reached for the television remote on the floor on the rug underneath your coffee table. You managed to make just enough contact with your pinky toe, your little pinky piglet toe, and dragged the remote toward you, and it swept aside the banana peel and the wrappers and what appeared to be a soft red jujube with hairs and lint stuck to it. Once the television remote was at the base of the couch you carefully leaned forward, mindful not to cause a wave in the couch from the decompressing suspension of the springs beneath the plush brown seat cushions, a wave that could topple your Tiramisu and send it tumbling to rest on the sofa amongst the stained T-shirts and torn magazines and the detritus of chips and popcorn of days past. You carefully picked up the remote and turned on your television. You opened the Netflix app, and scrolled through the list of titles until you come across the one you were looking for: Tidying Up with Marie Kondo. You took a little spoonful of Tiramisu off the back of the groundhog, careful not to scratch his back with the spoon, because when you do, he wiggles and arches his back and sticks out his little shoulder blades because he seems to love his back scratched so much. You scrolled to the fourth episode of Tidying Up with Marie Kondo, and started it. You saw Marie Kondo all happy and bubbly and enthusiastic about tidying up. You looked to the groundhog and he looked to you with those knowing hazelnut eyes and you both laughed at her.

Copyright CWG Kemp, 2019