Performance Piece
by Gauraa Shekhar
7 A.M.
Quarantine
Examine daylight filtered through vinyl roller shades. Reach for the phone on the bedside. Refresh your inbox. Crease the sheets in indecision. Brush your teeth. Type ‘when is Father’s Day’ into the search bar. Think about the success of your peers. Refresh your inbox on the toilet. Remember a song. Remember an unfinished dream. Flush. Wash hands. Walk to the living room. Collect half-empty glasses with salt flakes still crusted along the rims. Bring them to the sink. Wipe down wooden surfaces with lavender oil. Refresh your inbox. Refresh it again. Spend the rest of the year refreshing your inbox.
Pick Up A Hobby
Preserve the ends when chopping scallions. Place cuttings into a vase or empty container. Watch the stalks inch taller and taller overnight. Forget to change out the water. Let the water grow brown and murky. Observe as green shoots perform a sad flop. Pick a different hobby.
Trouble Sleeping
Have white cheddar mac and cheese for breakfast. Fall asleep at daylight.
Secret Hitler Game Night
Solicit participation from your friends in a group text. Deal them cards as soon as they join the game. Elect a government. Enact a policy. Pass the Presidential Candidacy. Nominate a Chancellor. Assassinate the fascists.
Pick Up A Hobby (Reprise)
Tuck craft supplies neatly into to a storage bench. Put on a nineties sitcom. Try to balance an empty can of diet soda on your spouse’s knee.
Happy
Put on a record. Set the needle down. Light seven candles. Dance until the phone rings.
Hygiene
Pump a dime-sized amount of strawberry body wash into a sponge. Scrub your body in gentle but firm circular motions. Apply foaming gel to your legs. Shave in long, steady strokes, bending your kneecap to get that difficult area above the knee. Wait seven days before repeating the process.
Rage
Gather all misspellings of your name. Write each one down on a small piece of paper. Fold the pieces into small bits. Set a pillar candle into a secure base of aluminum foil. Light the candle. Feed the bits of paper into the flame. Watch the waxy edges of the candle soften and curl.
Cut Your Bangs
Spread a plastic bag over the bathroom sink. Brush dry hair towards your face using a fine-toothed comb. Adjust your strands until they form an even curtain over your eyes. Snip evenly from left to right with shears. Keep snipping until there’s nothing left. Once you’re done, gather the hair caught in the bag and slowly feed each strand to the candle flame.
Rage (Reprise)
Roll through your friends’ Instagram stories. Study infographics and protest signs in successions of fifteen second increments. Leave your phone to rest. Roll through your friends’ Instagram stories again two days later.
Dishes
Do them again. Then do them again.
Happy II
Gather ingredients for chocolate chip pancakes: butter, oat milk, brown sugar, overripe bananas, twelve ounces of dark chocolate chips. Softly spoon the chips into your mouth. Feel them melt on your tongue.
Reading
Glitch wooly wooly until. the become. the line Glitch the become blur words blur become. a a words the a words blur words over the a over a blur blur wooly words until. become. a same line become. over Glitch until line Glitch until line same wooly over line blur a wooly line Glitch Glitch over the same blur wooly become words wooly a same wooly until over until wooly the the words the wooly over wooly become wooly the wooly line the a over over Glitch a same blur wooly line blur blur wooly a words the the line line the blur over until over a a words words same over become words line blur become wooly the the blur line same become.
Quitting
Let your throat singe for nicotine. Look for cigarettes in forgotten coat pockets. Finding none, smudge the apartment with sage.
