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The Collector

Isabel Brome Gaddis

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At an early age, I stepped out of the shop window of
everyday commerce, devoting myself instead to an indolent
kind of observation and assessment of the world. Having a
facile intelligence, I had catalogued the most common
human follies before completing junior high school, leaving
me with a lifelong disinterest in the world of politics.

With the twitchy, clutching fingers of the collector, now I
acquire the better-camouflaged sins of the human heart.

I adore the greedy love that smothers a yellow-green shoot
beneath a heavy forkful of compost, fragrant and fecal.

I feast on the intense self-regard of the speaker at the
podium, lauded by the hospital for children, his pleasure in
his own accomplishments as warm and protective as the
pus in a blister.

Dearest of all, my own brittle arrogance, thin and precious,
the last potato chip in the basket. I devour it, salty as blood.

Crows on the thin strip of grass pluck dried bits off an old
corpse, dreaming of past burritos. Jesus Christ sits in the
first-class airport lounge, his privacy protected by a
baseball cap and a lackey wearing a laminated badge on a
lanyard, but He can’t resist craning His neck to watch the
police drama on the TV—the guest star is a close personal
friend. An enormous work of stained glass—hundreds of
circles, red and yellow—freezes in the vast window of an
airline terminal. It will hang there for another twenty-eight
years, or maybe twenty-two.