Rikki Santer

If You Have To Ask

If you have to ask twice what’s under the hood, you already know the sky is heading your way with mammary clouds for your soliloquy. If you have to keep asking, what’s next? then you just found in your back pocket three lyrical bulletins of hemming and hawing that survived the wash cycle. If you have to ask for another paper cup of watered-down lemonade from twin nieces who enterprise like their stockbroker daddy, then you are betwixt and between a Freudian tale. If every time you ask if this next haircut could be kinder, you’re still not ready to meet absolution of fraying self-image or deep disappointment in over-priced, goji-berry smoothies. If you have to ask if a podcast can be the fount of enlightenment, you need to open your eyes immediately and pay attention to oncoming traffic. If you have to ask if a butterfly net would be an appropriate accessory for singles-bar-weekends, you must know that hovering braggarts get stuck in mesh, too. If you have to ask if you could swallow that dazzling explosion of your son’s unbridled laughter, you know that soon you will be gnawing on its still life. When they ask you if you’d be okay if a snail follows you for the rest of your life, you know you’ve guzzled too much animal spirit serum, and now it just doesn’t matter.