By Douglas W. Milliken
The first one up and the uneasy anti-ritual of making coffee in someone else’s kitchen, barefoot and cat-stepping the cold linoleum as quietly as possible while searching drawer to drawer, cupboard to cupboard for grounds, filters, spoons, et cetera. The gentle morning chill slinking inside through fallible window screens, the slid half-open back patio door. Stacks of last night’s spaghetti-smeared dishes and collectible jam jars wine-stained red alongside stacks of dog-eared books, magazines, sketchbooks, junk mail. Sticky notes everywhere. A parakeet blaze of otherworldly green skittering in its paper-lined cage. The absolutely filthy floor. How can such an overfull space teeming with the evidence of others’ bursting lives feel so welcoming, pull up a chair, make yourself a drink? So drastically different from any place known and dared called home: how does this feel like home? The scent of sun warming all that grass out there. The shirtless neighbor with his track-mark arms and Z Cavariccis doing slow-motion capoeira in his adjoining backyard. If no one wakes up then no one will ever be compelled to say aloud it’s time to go. Everything begins now. The brewing machine steamily clears its throat. Then it clicks.
Douglas W. Milliken is a queer composer, artist, and writer based in Saco, Maine. The author of several books—most recently the novel Enclosure Architect and the experimental family history Any Less You—he is also a founding member of the post-jazz chamber septet The Plaster Cramp. His honors include a Pushcart Prize and awards from the Maine Writers and Publishers Alliance, Glimmer Train, and RA & Pin Drop Studios, among others. www.douglaswmilliken.com
Artwork by Dan Cassidy