Bells ‘n Bowls

I got it from IKEA

(fulfilled by Amazon)

a DIY bridge

–or roll away stairwell–

and wouldn’t you know it, most

of the instructions were missing

–just the diagram,

build-it-by-steps page

(and packing slip)

came with–

(plus Slip-n-Slide bonus gift)

but I gave it a go just the same.

The ole: community college try.

and yeah, the lack of return ship label factored in, too, I suppose,

Still. . .once I rolled up my sleeve

–on the one arm left–

Schroedinger’ed the cat,

and popped every bubble in the wrap,

I was in for pound following penny, anyway

(lucky or not, there it was)

. . .

–plumb out of space in which to turn around or even breathe, and

grey real estate

“moving day” chaotic–

. . .

I pretended I could breathe

–blustering & posturing & puffin’ & huffin’–

connected A to B

. . .

and C to God knows what all else,

and right away I couldn’t fit the Allen wrench

into the main frame,

the sudden

conversion of alphabetized system

to numeric code–confusing,

and

G, I don’t know how that figured,

and then

2 more finite than eternal, as I recall,

and

nothing at all binary,

whereas the subsequent lapse of code altogether

–replaced by Chinese, or Japanese, or

some Asian language made largely of emojis, and “Hello, Kitties”

rendered the ultimate construction beyond

“I have leftover screws” iffy.

. . .

Little wonder, then, I fashioned a fence

–instead of bridge–

burdened by that dang Slip-n-Slide that

couldn’t even double-down as a modern-day moat

–at that point–

and if I couldn’t stow it outside, where could I put the bone-breaker?

not one step at’all

(turned out)

but at least I found a use for the rail

. . .

partitioning grey real estate

into kaleidoscope cubbies

/___/___/___/

in any number of which

–or alphabetized code–

I lost myself

. . .

in a maze.