Consolation

from "Folding Chairs," 2015, by Ashley Mistriel

Consolation

Oh ye of the reaching tentacle
Do not despair

I know it feels like you are flailing
but all your appendages are attached
to your body

and under you there is a chair
or floor or dirt

and under all of that a fairly solid place
to which we both belong

Consolation

Consolation

In the dream I console someone with this phrase: Remember, nothing
is permanent, even life. I stole this sentence from a clerk at Target
one evening last December when each register had a line of gift-
seeking humans. Has it been crazy, I asked it with sympathy because
maybe I could help by using a nice voice.

Yes, but it’s ok, the cashier told me, and then, without intensity, Nothing
is permanent. Even life. 

It was funny in one of my favorite ways for things to be funny,
in that it was cousins with sadness.