So it’s the millennium (or not depending on how you count your years) and I’m in the Post Office waiting to get shot or at least held hostage by some raving maniac with Y2K wired in his brain, compelling him to—just do it!—and my packages are all over two pounds so I hafta go up to the window and there’s that crazy red light 2000-countdown thing with only hours to go, the seconds flying by like dying brain cells, reminding me and everybody else just how old we really are, and not getting a second younger. Then, I realize everyone in the place has that edgy kinda look, like they’re all wondering how they ended up in the Post Office on New Year’s Eve with forgotten Christmas gifts tucked under their arms or catalog packages to be returned, and if ever there was a possibility something really bad would happen, this is the time, this is the place.
It’s in-out, don’t look back. The guy in the Santa hat is grabbing his change like there’s no tomorrow, just grateful to slide out the door with his life. Moms and kids too, how can you bring kids to the end of the world? Clerks all talking at warp speed, let’s get this place cleared before the crazies show up. Everyone’s focused on the millennium clock, just beating out the last hours to the tune of their own hearts. No I don’t want insurance, no it’s not a bomb, no I haven’t taken anything from strangers. No candy, no drugs, no nothin’. Just returning some stuff to the catalog store like everyone else. Just trying to get out with my mind intact. One more day, one more millennium.
has writing published or forthcoming in Beautiful Cadaver Social Anthology (a Camp fire anthology), Gyroscope, Painted Bride, Rise Up Review, Solo Novo, The Marin Poetry Center Anthology, and Writers Resist, among others. The author of three published chapbooks, she also has one in progress from Finishing Line Press. In the 1980s, she edited the eclectic literary magazine Turkey Buzzard Review in Bolinas, California. She now runs political campaigns for progressive candidates (mainly women), practices environmental law, and lives in Marin County, California with her husband and two dogs.
