The Bottom Lined

They had always smoked cigarettes after making love.  It was a disgusting habit they loathed in others and admired only in the company of each other.

"I had more to say to you.  Didn't you know?" she said to him dryly as she dressed herself behind the partition.

"Didn't I know what?" he asked of her.  "And why are you getting dressed?  Come here."

"Didn't you know what I was going to say to you?" she asked of him, further indicating her frustration with his sheer lack of empathy.

"If I had known, would't I have let you speak?" he answered.  It was as if everything he said was out of habit and never out of humanity.  It was in that moment, she knew she had to leave him.  There was nothing left for her here.  There never would be.

"Not necessarily.  I would think it may have encouraged you to interrupt me," she said.

He was not stirred by this allegation.  Somewhere in these last weeks of their demise, he had become accustomed to her accusations.  They were white noise now.  Most nights, he would listen to her sterilize the room with all that she had to say.

There was little evidence of their happiness here.  After all, they were well versed in the art of commiseration and intoxicated by the notion of letting it all go up in smoke.

The Customs of Being Customary

I was accustomed to these misfit confessions of mine,
they were routine at this point in the game,
whatever game this might be,
but you just kept pointing out that my recognition of these flaws didn't do anything to rectify them,

And I suppose you were right,
that may be the most sour tasting sentence I have ever uttered,
admitting that you might, in fact, be right,
that you might, even in theory, be right in this matter

We can just shut the drapes and pretend that we know how to make eye contact,
that we want to even look in each other's direction,
I know I can make those concessions,
in the name of this confession of mine,

But first,
you tell me why I was full of misgivings,
why I was some kind of misfit in these parts,
why I continued to be your square peg when I believed I was anything but

I was accustomed to feeling bad about myself,
you taught me very well,
but I think I wanted amnesia,
spoonfuls and spoonfuls of it,

all the while,
I was fairly certain you would leave me here hungering in no man's land

The Nonsense of a Narcissist

If you would just let go and let me alienate you the way I knew how,
then none of this would be a problem,
especially if you would stop telling me that I did not know what was best for you,
when, in fact, I knew exactly that,

Deep down,
deep, deep down,

you were not a bad person at heart,
in your heart,
in the part of it that still remained

But we were one in the same,
you and me,
because I was not a good person either

And I was certain that we could co-exist,
you and me,

with our furniture polish and our reveries of rubbing out the imperfections in this wood,
the malformations we knew to be indelible to say the least,

But this could all work very well,
in this round hole,
if we could hold our dirty rags,

if you could walk with me down by the wading pool,
and laugh about the flip side,
and laugh about your flip side,
and laugh about your flip side

In The Cleared

This landscape was full of fatalities,
flooded with them, in fact,
momentary lapses that resulted in dead air,
in a sedentary life meant only for another century

And at the turn of this century,
we thought we had minded the gap,
that we had dodged a bullet of sorts,
but not for long,

There were potholes in the middle of that vineyard,
alluding to the death of an other worldly metropolis,
and maybe, just maybe,
we were all proxies for each other,
skipping rocks when the other one could not,
doing the tip toe through these parts to avoid the land mines

This terrain was full of those mines,
after all,
they were the most inexpensive fear factor,
it did not matter whether they existed or not,
just the figment was enough,
the illusion could,
and would,
hold us all hostage

And that day,
years ago,
and years from now,
we would teach ourselves, again,
how to eat in public

The Once, The Over

One another is a deceptive phrase,
it implies some kind of reverence to you,
or to me,
or to anyone without ice in their veins,

but did we like each other all that much?


We were supposed to be blind to each other's harmful tendencies,
and that should have made us humane,
but in the end,
it was what made us destroy each other

but did we bother to understand our mortality?


You were a better person than I,
always had been,
and it was a lonely existence for me,
walking around with that sobering understanding

but did we think the best of each other?


Maybe we were just square pegs in round holes,
we were certainly square about all of this nonsense

but only because we were never taught how to die

The Leg Up

It became very clear to me,
very quickly,
how someone could drown in a hot tub,

how someone could lose track of time with a dead face watch,

You told me once that I had a dead face,
but I was sure that in another life I was full of life,

I ran faster than you,
but only because you didn't run at all,
because you believed it to be a waste of time,

but there was no more time to be had,
not for me or for you,
or any of us for that matter,

So then it became very clear to me,
very slowly,
how someone could let their blood boil,

how someone could leave the burner on before falling asleep on the couch

The Touch Up

You were a good man,
that was the thing of it all,
but you never knew that about yourself,
and so that was the problem

we believed in each other at the wrong times, you and me,
and so that was always our problem

I found the good in you when you could only see bad,
and you saw the worst in me when I could only do my best,

I had half a mind to tell you the truth about all of this,
to tell you that you deserved better than what we had to offer each other,

but offerings were slim these days,
and I was no longer qualified to define the good, the bad, and the ugly,

but then, again,
neither were you

The Pool Side

I obviously did something to put myself in this position,
but at the bottom of the pool, I was making some questionable decisions that involved the dissolution of my memory---

Oh, well---
that was the only thing I could come up with,
and after that, I dug my toes further into the cement floor

I would be the first person to breathe fully under here,
to report back that there were other places we could breathe off life support

It was warmer under here than they gave it credit for,
but none of this was blanketing me,
or the fact that you were gone for good now

The temperature in my room dropped a good ten degrees every night,
and went it did I took to swimming,
and then fishing,
and then anything that allowed me to duck out of there and rest under here

I was a good person with a faulty moral compass,
who was unseasonably good with euphemisms,

and once I learned to grin and bear it,
to exhale through my nose,
I swore I would I appreciate something,

someday

Two And Fro

You were not my nemesis,
just as I was no longer yours,

one day.
long ago.
I bought yellow chalk and you bought blue.
and they said we were cut from a different cloth.

I wasn't cut from any cloth.
I was full of fissures and unforgiving cracks in my molding,
but you would mold this however you would see fit

one day.
yesterday.
You brought me a jar of peanut butter.
and they said it was your peace offering.

I laughed for a very long time when you stood at my door with that jar,
and there was an understanding of your thickness,
of your inability for deliberation,

that day.
I shut the door in your face.
but before I did one such thing,
you parked your fingers in my molding,
and asked me why I would do such a thing,
what would possess me to slam that door,

so I reminded you of my allergy to nuts,
and it was then that you got the biggest picture of all.

The (Bitter) Sweet Sixteen

If I shut my eyes and learned to breathe in and out my nose instead,
then maybe I could be at ease with all of this,

But even then,
even at ease,
we would not,
could not,
be at peace

They should leave the carpets as is,
leave the holes in this infrastructure in tact,
and then we could,
we should,
raze it to the ground

If I learned to overcome these hiccups,
then maybe I could express how distraught I have been,

But even then,
even in the silence and newfound contentment
there was a discomfort in my comfort

They should make a raucous,
just to scare off the calm before the storm,
the contrary designs of the still life,

And if we held our hands,
and if we washed behind our ears,
perhaps then,
especially then,
we could bypass the eye for an eye,
for the eye to eye

The Shape Shifter

Filling the void felt a lot like empty space,
like a black hole that I had been confused by as a child,
and suddenly bored by as an adult

There was a disenchantment from the get go here,
from the turn of the century,
or perhaps a year after

We had a honeymoon,
as everyone does,
but honeymoons ended on Tuesdays

And thus began the hollowing of our stomachs,
of our collective conscience,
whatever that was

I dreamt of four walls and then octagons and then too many walls to count,
and they were all white,
but if I stared too long,
they became kaleidoscopic,
and unforgiving of my aging ways

We sat on the stairs,
me on one step,
and everyone else on the other step,

but there were coffee stains in the carpet,
embedded there,
same as the scars in here,

in and around the great divide,
etched among us for better or worse

The First Song of the Departed

Now comes the uprising of the downtrodden,
beyond the storm clouds,
and well underneath the rain,
they will raise their hands first in anger,

then revenge,
then in hopes of salvation

Gusts of unused air are running just over the carpets of these corridors,
simmering with optimism,
if we could just dip our necks down long enough to breathe

like giraffes,
like snakes

Once we slithered through these cracks,
once we told them what we deserved,
what kind of destiny had been etched into our manifest,
we could overcome all of this,

this being partisan,
this being perishable

An Account of Being Erie, Summer 1958

Darkness is on the rise,
as it always is this time of year,
when the long days turn into shortcuts,
and the sunsets trickle slowly off course,

I learned to expect very little from anyone but myself,
if you want something done,
give it to a busy person,
so they said,

if you want something done,
do it yourself,
is what they meant,

There was an evening standard of sorts,
not the newspaper,
but the settling of the temperature this time of night,
over the years,
had become my only form of stability,

if the Moon was supposed to be the light at the end of the tunnel,
God's flashlight, if you will,
then why was it the sum of all fears,
the backdrop for this disappointing diorama of mine

This is all upside down,
as it always is this time of year,
but then again,
even Isaac Newton was human on some of these humid eves

As Much Or More

On the fifth of the month, I asked you to get the fuck out,
and you did no such thing,
so I recounted everything for you,
and it was in my last harangue that I figured as much,
that I figured it all out

Sex was never the weapon,
you were
because you felt nothing on the left side of your chest
because you felt nothing in you cortex

There was nothing cerebral or correct or just about any of this,
but you taught me that,
that justification was nothing if not confounding

unless it was out there swimming in solitude,
in a pool of dissipating virtue,
somewhere beyond the Fata Morgana

The Tip Tow

I was out of breath in this chair,
thinking of all the ways my maker could make up his mind about me,
who shall die by fire,
who by water,
who by the hand of another,

I clinched my hands in the crooked wood on the side of this chair,
musing about the tree of life,
and which of its branches belonged to me,
and which of them would give way to nature

I crossed my legs and propped them up on the bottom of this rocker,
and counted the wrinkles in my palms,
and realized there was very little difference between them and my fingerprints

I twirled my hair aimlessly,
hoping that a life adrift would somehow circumnavigate

I was choking in this room, in this chair,
recalling all the ways I let you down,
recalling how my pride got the best of me,

and so I let my maker make me,
in this house,
in this room,
in this chair of yours,

we made our deal

The Case of The Mondays

"Monday evenings were boring," she said to the psychologist, as if this was the first time he had heard this particular weekday criticized.

"That's certainly one way to look at this, Mac.  Why do you think you feel this way?" asked Dr. Button.

"I don't feel this way anymore, Dr. Button.  No, certainly not," Mac said.

"And why's that?"

"I can't.  Not anymore," she said without hesitation.

Dr. Button was often, and for lack of a better word, bored by many of his patients.  He found them to be confused, neurotic souls who spent the better part of their youth complaining about problems that might occur in the future, instead of the ones currently percolating right under their nose.

"Mac, I'm not going to play this game with you.  We're here to talk about why you feel the way you do about these things.  Why you are disturbed by the mere existence of a certain night of the week.  Please.  Please try to make some attempt to explain that," he said frustratedly.  He was nearly out of breath by the time he had finished admonishing her.

"It doesn't take a rocket scientist to know the answer to this, Dr. Button.  I'm surprised you don't already know.  Everyone knows.  It's been this way since 2001.  Wouldn't you agree?" she asked of him.

"You mean because of 9/11?"

"Yes."

"Because it was on a Tuesday morning.  Up until then, Monday nights were the end of an already boring existence?"

"Yes."

"And now, Mac?  Now what do you think of Monday evenings?" Dr. Button inquired.

Mac swallowed and looked down at her swollen fingers.  She had been biting her nails for the better part of the last two hours.  "I'm afraid of them," she admitted.  "I am afraid to go to sleep."

"Mac, this is an understandable casualty of 9/11.  There are thousands upon thousands of those stories of personal turmoil.  And this is just yours," he explained.

She breathed a brief sigh of relief before he went on to disqualify his comforting statistic.

"It is also an irrational fear, Mac.  One that needs to be overcome.  Do you understand me?" he asked.

"This could be crippling to your life.  You are applying what I call a preventative handicap," he said to her.

"So you think it's not real?" she asked as a tear streamed down the left side of her face.

"That's not what I said.  It's very real.  So real, in fact, there's a word for it.  Lunaediesophobia," Dr. Button remarked.

"Well, what am I supposed to do?"  she said as she shrugged her shoulders in surrender.  "You're telling me there's a phobia, a diagnosed sickness, for what I am saying?  I am not crazy!"

"No, you're not, Mac.  But not all bad things happen on Tuesdays," Dr. Button said.

"Columbine was on a Tuesday," Mac retorted.

"So was your birthday," he said.  "How 'bout them apples?"

"I don't like apples, Dr. Button!" Mac exclaimed.

"No, you certainly do not.  You certainly do not," he said as he slumped in his chair, resigned to his circumstances.

The Train of Thought Following Murder in the Second Degree, Circa 2002

Answer the question.
What question is that?
You know very well what question I am referring to, you.
I do?
Yes, of course. Don't be ridiculous.  We want to know if you did it.
Yes, I did it.
And what do you have to say for yourself?
Nothing.
Nothing?
That's what I said, wasn't it?
Is it?
Is what?
You're confusing yourself, I think.
The fact that I don't think is what got me into this mess in the first place, isn't it?
Isn't it though?
Who's to say?
You!  You're to say.  I hate that.  If you're asking who, it's you, goddamnit.
I am no longer sure what we are talking about here.
You're very sure.  You're just also sure you want to talk about something else.
I don't answer to you.
No, you certainly don't.  At least not well.
What's that supposed to mean?
Don't change the subject.  I asked you if you did it and you said yes.
That I did.
How could you do it?
It seemed right at the time.  When the train was coming and I couldn't take it anymore.
Take what?
The yammering in my ear.  About nothing.
That's what it was?
When did it become okay to be boring?
I don't think it did.
So you agree, then?
I agree to disagree.
That's just a fancy way of saying you don't agree.
That's right.  I don't agree with you pushing her onto the tracks.
And why not?
It was a temporary solution to a bigger problem.
Is that how you see it?
That's how I see it.
You're never looking at any of this with the right set of eyes.
Where can I buy a set of those?
Don't be a smart ass.
But that's exactly what I am, aren't I?
And why is that?
Because I've turned the tables.  At least here.  Haven't I?
Haven't I?

She Said

She plunged to her death from a waterfall,
at least that's what they would say in her eulogy,
that she was fearless,
irreverent even,
unafraid of consequence and incapable of envisioning her demise

She told me once that she wanted to die in an exotic way,
that when people talked about this story for years to come,
they would praise her for her lack of hindsight instead of ridiculing it

She said that she would not pen a last will and testament,
for she did not believe them to necessarily reflect what she would want while walking into the light,
it was close,
but no cigar

She put her feet in the water,
rubbing her toes up against the charcoal,
until they bled,
until she slipped away

She found herself face down at the bottom of that faucet,
blue and buried,
and without the prestige

She puppeteered the people at that podium,
and put glitter in their eyes,
and without even trying,
became the angel they had always believed her to be

She was gift wrapped,
in a box,
without valiance,
with the noise of her plans seeping back up through the grass

The War of a Current

Light me up like birthday candles,
and make me feel better about the meaning of this brightness,

set me on fire and sear everything but the last layer of my epidermis,
and then cut right through that to my bone,

and when you removed the femur,
I would have cries of writhing, writhing pain,

Take your turnkey and find my belly button,
although it no longer exists,

push it through my innards and then put it up the lazy river of my intestines,
just so I could open my eyes a little wider that day

Light me up like bulbs,
full of promises,
but mainly the promise of an expiration date,

and then call all of this your idea,
like the bulb itself,
like its maker,
like its taker

The Accounts of a Bathing Beauty, Circa 1944

I soaked in this dingy little tub,
wondering good and long what it was that I ever did to you,

I sat on this tattered red chair recalling that I had once borrowed it,

without so much as a single inclination to return it to your care

In the beginning,

I saw visages of the end,

moments that I knew would come to fruition,

But I had hired proxies for the better part of my days,

they were good puppeteers,

but they got tired of reenacting The Fountainhead,

and I couldn't blame them,

no one was as beautiful as she believed Dominiqe to be,

as any of us did

In the back of the file cabinets,

there were memorandums about us,

about our failures to come to terms,

to agree to disagree with grace,

You were vapid,

and the bubbles in this tub reminded me of your tepid way of life,

and the way that even in its infinite silence, 

your disappearing act was thick and malignant

My Drift

Fancy seeing you here---

[you]

it's dark in here,

wouldn't you agree?
would you?  would you?


I can't see you in this light,

[there is no light]

because this is a cemetery and you don't belong here
you know that

there are no street lights in here,

[why, you say?]

there is no one coming and going in here,
in these parts

The Supper Clubbed

The death on the Surfliner was disturbing,
to say the least,

there was proof of bludgeoning,
sometime after dessert and before breakfast,

and at 5:42am,
they discovered her body dismembered,
and her appendages plated in the dining car,

the smell of dusty crushed red velvet drapes was overwhelming,
and even the cadaver was a casualty of the archaic nature of this room,

There was a long day ahead,
to flambe the intestines,
to sautee both ears,
to julienne this all before the little piggies came aboard

the smell hovered like fog,
just long enough for them to mince the meat,
to bring this all to a boil,

just short enough to retire to their dressing rooms and cloak themselves in the appearance of unsophistication

The train would never stop,
this they knew,
trailing on toward the Pacific,
toward the promise of a dumping ground,
where they could contend with the contents of their dinner

No Contest

When you left me, I decided that I hated static electricity,
the ideology behind such a phrase made no sense to me,
and if I thought good and hard, which I often did,
it had also disqualified the entire semblance of this existence of ours,

I spent many sleepless nights in our unwashed sheets,
then kneeling by the bedside to ask for some rolling thunder,
some lightning beyond the clouds that were clouding my window,
anything to illuminate and undo this silence

I watched the blinking cursor on these blank pages of mine,
wondering why your absence was so intoxicating,
and in the early morning hours,
just when the moon was descending into its sarcophagus,
I found myself curling my fingers and grasping this comforter,
that was anything but,

The apparition of you weighed heavy on your pillow,
so I let you sleep there for years and years,
until one day,
on a cloudless Sunday, I pled with these broken parts,

I thought about my circumstances,
and I realized I could get up and out of this fetal position of mine,
this rumbling coil of habit I had gotten myself into,
and I could just

roll over---

The Pontification of a Patriot, Circa 2012

I never understood how you believed we lived in anything other than this world of moral relativity,

of why I do,

of what you do,

of what who does what to who

I told you that what you did was wrong and that you had made a wrong turn several exits back,

back before the overpass,

before the passing lane,

before these signs started saying no passing

If I was on the right and you were on the left in this wicked game of musical chairs, did that mean that the elephant and the donkey couldn't play house the way we had learned to,

to read between the lines,

to sleep with the enemy time and again,

to do things that are wrong because they feel right,

If I wore red, white, and blue, and I spewed the last harangues of the Boston Tea Party, would you deem me a patriot,

and then I would play the license game alone,

with no help,

with no capital,

with no pedestal to lodge my irreverent complaint

with no Jimmy to glamorize the filibuster,

to say that nice guys always finish first these days

because they don't,

not since Tuesday in 2001,

not since Tuesday in 2008,

If I stood up on a podium and gave you my ominous jeremiad, you would laugh, and all the while, the rolling thunder in the distance would hear my lingering cry

The Backwards Nature of a Bond

slaves,
were all we were,
slaves,

I wasn't as damaged as they said,
but only because I knew the length and width of my scars,
and it was none of your business,

it was mine,
and I was possessive over such nonsense because I was protective of you,
and you not being infected,
and my fear of your defection,

but I got very tired,
very quickly,
of this anxiety,

because it did nothing for me,
or for you,
or for this,

except for tie us up good and tight,
in these chains,
in these ties,
that bind

and then---
unwind

Eyes To Eye

If I leaned out the window and called you a peeping tom, would you finally admit to your indiscretions?

or at least do me the favor of recalling mine?
the ones you recorded in your nightly ledger?

If I put my hand out and offered you this olive branch,
would you clasp your fingers in mine and then let me teach you the art of forgiveness?

or at least do me the favor of playing Houdini when I look over my left shoulder,
in shame,
in disappointment?
could you? would you?


If I put my lips upon your lips,
would you show me the empathy I always needed from you but never deserved?

or at least,
at the very least,
would you hold me?

The After's Math

After sundown, I got to know the reasons why you were afraid of the dark,
after all, there was no promise of tomorrow,
not until tomorrow showed its ever changing face in the early hours of the morning,

After midnight, I began to wonder what constituted a morning,
and what would happen to all of us if we sat sedentary here in this quicksand we made,
if we just drank bottomless cocktails and talked about the lives we would lead one day,
all the while,
the days were catching up with us

We were in the center lane, you and me,
certain that no one on the outside could gain enough,
could be good enough,
could be fast enough,
to get by,
to get one by us

After breakfast,
I did not feel so bad about myself,
there were promises to be kept before the late afternoon,
plush dreams not yet deflated my prickly pins,

After all of this,
we kept our nightly date with our down,
but only because it was a comforter,
otherwise we would have turned up the bulb as soft as can be,
in the insides of that closet,
and we would have camped out there until they closed the doors on us

A Blanket Statement

"He just wanted it to matter.  It was a profound thing to hear from a teenager.  I never heard that from anyone else in my life, not even my parents who lived well into their eighties," Sharon recalled as she sat on an exceedingly uncomfortable chaise lounge in the office of her doctor.

Dr. Riley was a renowned psychiatrist, known for his work with grieving parents and children.  Families came from all over the country to seek his advice, mainly because he had suffered his own loss as a young parent.  Sharon figured that a firsthand shrink somehow justified the need to see a shrink at all.  Seeking psychiatric care had always been frowned upon in Sharon's family.

"He sounded like an old soul," said Dr. Riley.  "Is that how you would describe him?"

"I don't know that I could describe him very well," Sharon said as she wiped her eyes and wept into her forearm.

"Sharon, this is supposed to be a sanctuary.  You don't have to be ashamed to cry in front of me," he said to her.

"I'm not afraid to cry," she quickly responded.  But Sharon's tears were immutable and inimitable because they were tears of guilt.  "I'm not afraid, Dr. Riley.  I'm not ashamed.  I'm inconsolable."

"At a certain point, Sharon, you have to come to terms with the fact that this is not all okay," he pointed out.

Sharon stopped her crying upon hearing this.  She was baffled by his oversimplification of the matter.

"I don't understand," she said.  "I know that none of this is okay.  You know that I know that, right?" she asked of him, as if she needed his approval.

"I know that you know that, Sharon.  But that isn't what I am saying to you," he answered.

"What are you saying?" Sharon asked.

"I'm saying that at a certain point in the wake of this tragedy, you have to go beyond that.  You have to recognized that this isn't okay.  And then you have to be okay with that.  You have to be okay with not being okay," he clarified.  "That's the only way to get past this."

"I might never get past this, Dr. Riley," she said.  New puddles coated the bottom of her lids each time she blinked at him.

"I know that, Sharon.  That is a very real--"

"Do you?  Do you know that?  Because sometimes I think that you do and then you ask me questions or you make statements that I would call blanketed.  I don't--"

"Blanketing this was never my intention and you know that, Sharon.  I'm not going--"

"Do you really know what I mean, though?  A teenager--a child--walked into traffic and it was my car that put him to his death.  My car.  Not yours," she said as she took a very public possession of her own private hell.  "My car.  And I have to live with that everyday."

"Yes, you do.  And you don't have to listen to a word I say on the matter.  But it is my job to sit here and say what it is that I think will help.  That much I know.  I know that when my entire family died around me in our car accident, when I was the sole survivor of that situation and I wanted nothing more than to die along with them, I know that I got very possessive of my grief.  That I believed no one had the kind of grief I had--"

"They didn't.  You were right," she agreed.  "They still don't.  That's yours and no one else's."

"Yes, it is, Sharon.  But this isn't a prized possession.  This is a plague.  All I'm telling you is the sooner you grasp what everyone else seems to call the 'new normal,' the better off you'll be.  And yes, I know, 'better off' is a silly, nonsensical term given the circumstances.  Clearly no one is better off here."

"He was just a kid.  How could he have wanted to die so young?  I'm almost mad at him.  He was selfish to give me his last words.  I have no one to tell them to," Sharon said.

"You can tell them to me.  You are telling them to me," Dr. Riley pointed out.

"There was no one left," she whispered to herself, trying to say something more but giving into her tears again.  "There was no one."

"You were helpless," said Dr. Riley.

"Desperate.  I was anointed witness to the very deathbed I had made," she said to him ruefully and in hopes of evoking something more.

Dr. Riley knew the kind of guilt, the analysis of a single moment that she would experience for many years to come, but there was nothing he could do to mend her broken heart.

"Sharon, you probably knew him better than anyone.  And in the end, in our final days, we will clasp hands with strangers, with our wilting neighbors, and we will quote Shel Silverstein just before the reckoning, just before the fissures start to fissure."

In Case of Emergency

Keep your legs and feet in the upright position---
that is what they always said for your safety and protection,
but I was under the assumption that they said all of this under false pretenses

Didn't you have anything to say to me in here---
where it was good and pressurized?
where there was no place to run?
and before they let the yellow masks hang down and take over all of this---

Didn't you have anything more for me?
more than this set of directions that only applied when all of this was on ice---
more than these pictures of people that did not qualify with my photographic memory,

photographic memory is erased by the introduction of adrenaline,
this much I know,
and you can tell me all you want about crossing my palms and putting them above my head,
and you can tell me to keep quiet, to be calm and carry on,
to sit still,

But even here,
even in this ridiculous upright position,
even I could see your lips were sealed,
and this was all a last hoorah by design,
and I could tell you without hesitation,
there is not a chance in hell that I will recall that big red arrow in midair

Starry Eyed

If I had a better flag, I would have given it to you,
if it had better stars and stripes, I would have counted them for you,
if it wasn't torn and tattered the way beautifully painful things often are,
then I would rip it apart at the seams,
for you and only you

If I had a photograph instead of this flimsy little triangle, I would have given it to you,
if it had sharper edges, I would have pointed them away from you,
if it wasn't in the name of tradition, and in some ways the Holy Ghost,
then I would have treated it like the abandoned sandwich it was,
and I would have put it through the looking glass,
for you and only you

If I had something more to say, I would have said it to you,
if I had the memory of when he was fearless in his existence,
if I had the wherewithal to tell you about our bunk beds in the desert,
and that we all knew we were going to die sooner rather than later,
I would have told this, I would have done this,
for you and only you

If I could go back and make different decisions, the way people often wish they could,
then I would talk you out of the heroics that come with being a hero by choice,
then I would remind you that your life had been multiple choice all along,
if I could do any and all of the above, I would,

for you

and only you.

Fade To Bright

"Are you afraid?" Arthur asked of her.  Deep down, he knew they would never see eye to eye, the way people who share admissions and confessions often do.  This saddened him but he continued to prod Ruth day after day.

"Afraid of what?" Ruth answered.

"Don't ask me that.  You know exactly what I am talking about," Arthur snapped.

"Why are you so upset with me?  I told you I wasn't afraid and you keep asking me if I am.  Do you know something I don't know?" she said to him.

"I know a lot.  I know a lot," he said.  "I told you I was afraid and I just thought--"

"You thought what?" she interrupted.

"I thought we wanted the same things," Arthur said.  He, himself, didn't really know what these things were.  He just knew that they had become one of those couples who only loved each other for their similarities.

"We don't want the same things.  We never wanted the same things.  We were afraid of the same things," Ruth said.  "Do you understand what I am saying?"

"No, not really.  I guess I am as thick as you always claimed me to be," he admitted shamefully.

"You're not thick, Arthur.  You're an optimist.  You have no idea how to sleep.  To really sleep.  But how could you?" she asked.

"What are you talking about?" he said.

"You're afraid of the dark," she said.  "So am I."

"So what?" he asked.

"So what?" she retorted.  "Saying you're afraid of the dark means only one thing."

"And what's that?" he asked as if he already knew the answer.  He was really tired of her accusing him of not exploring his demons, of conceding to the inevitable, of breathing calmly in the face of an unsettling premonition.  She had become the casualty of the simplistic nature of his happiness but he no longer felt bad about any of this.

"It means you don't know how to see the light," she said as she flipped the switch on the wall, never to return again.