Free Agency
︎︎︎ Rodrigo Restrepo Montoya
︎ JAN 27, 2022
Laura
makes approximately
$250,000 a year. She belongs
to a book group. They read
books about management.
They talk about being managers.
A red beetle climbs the branch
of an Aspen Grove.
A teensy spider attacks.
One of the beetle’s legs
is ruined. It continues its journey
with seven legs.
In other words, find a cult
and join it. Play to win.
I’m in line for checkout
when I ask Lewis how he’s doing.
“I wish I wasn’t working
but I leave a quiet life.”
“Leave?” I ask.
“Lead!” he says.
In the line to heaven
everyone has to pee.
On a scale of one to ten,
one being proxy wartime,
ten being shapes and colors,
I’m a solid five.
Regardless, there’s an art to resisting
the temptation to overwater
one’s succulents, to resisting
the temptation to castrate
one’s son. How beautiful it is
to do nothing and rest afterward.
To take hot baths and warm showers
with symmetrical husbands.
To be a sidekick among sidekicks
and make very good on the promise
to take shit from everybody.
It would be easy to blame Laura.
Let’s blame Laura.
$250,000 a year. She belongs
to a book group. They read
books about management.
They talk about being managers.
A red beetle climbs the branch
of an Aspen Grove.
A teensy spider attacks.
One of the beetle’s legs
is ruined. It continues its journey
with seven legs.
In other words, find a cult
and join it. Play to win.
I’m in line for checkout
when I ask Lewis how he’s doing.
“I wish I wasn’t working
but I leave a quiet life.”
“Leave?” I ask.
“Lead!” he says.
In the line to heaven
everyone has to pee.
On a scale of one to ten,
one being proxy wartime,
ten being shapes and colors,
I’m a solid five.
Regardless, there’s an art to resisting
the temptation to overwater
one’s succulents, to resisting
the temptation to castrate
one’s son. How beautiful it is
to do nothing and rest afterward.
To take hot baths and warm showers
with symmetrical husbands.
To be a sidekick among sidekicks
and make very good on the promise
to take shit from everybody.
It would be easy to blame Laura.
Let’s blame Laura.
Rodrigo Restrepo Montoya is a first-generation Colombian-American living in Berkeley, California. He holds an MFA from the University of Wisconsin, where he was awarded an Advanced Opportunity Fellowship and the William W. Marr Graduate Scholarship Prize in Creative Writing. His work has appeared in Joyland and Triangle House Review. Say hi @RodrigoResMon.