By AJ M
The man claimed to be my friend,
he who had met me at that instant.
He crept alongside me, and behind,
sometimes even in the front of me,
I was reminded of Poe’s story of the doppelganger
I started to believe in him
He managed my social engagements,
work life, home life, the entirety of life by the end.
He arranged my funeral, though I wasn’t even dead.
He had drawn out every plot point in the narrative
till no one else listened to me,
till no one else seemed to care.
It wasn’t until I visited the kingdoms of other families,
across the street and down the block
when I realized they had managers too.
These managers all got together
and played cards one night a week,
they traded trinkets, undisclosed boxes,
whatsits, and photo albums,
possessions of all sorts.
They migrated, traded, kept track
of all accounts, their statistics neatly compiled
in separate but equal binders, each
labeled for their jurisdiction, their territory.
They recorded everything: timelines and calculations,
import/export dramas and the latest culture and gossip pages.
Industries were run from our very houses,
and on through the ages,
just history recording itself through the
mindful maps of these ‘Iowa nice’ neighbors.