Indecision, My Worst Enemy, My Bedfellow, My Self. I Look In The Mirror And Am Met With A Series Of Incomplete

That is what they don’t understand. They think some external pressure is destroying me but it has always been myself. Only my finger tips know where on my belly is tender and bruised enough to burrow into.

There is a kinder world within all of us, but we must agree to be as kind as it is to see it.

Facism rises, having not been put down. Like hot air in feverish men’s chests, pounding their rib cage with the old adage, me before all, me before all.

A Bother

I don’t mean to be a bother, I really don’t. I just can’t help but ruining everything all the time.

You don’t ruin everything silly.

Breakfast?

Well yeah but that’s one off.

Mom’s anniversary with dad?

That was an accident.

So I’ve said. If I told you it was on purpose would you be mad at me?

Well, no, I’m not mom but I’d be shocked. Why would you spill wine on her at dad’s grave on purpose?

I genuinely thought it would make her laugh. Because dad spilled wine on her on their first date remember?

Ohh, right. I didn’t think of that. Did you tell her you were trying to recreate that moment? She loves telling that story.

No. I felt so bad about it I threw up behind some lady’s tombstone over the hill. Mary S. Timbleton was her name.

You never told me you threw up on a dead woman’s grave.

Behind it.

Nearly there anyways. Makes for a better story. Dad would’ve laughed.

He was certainly a better storyteller than I am.

I like your stories just fine. You’ve yet to ruin one of those.

Thanks. I think.

Living in an anxious mind, I know fear intimately, I know nervousness like a favorite cousin-always sitting by me at dinner, insisting we stay in to watch movies instead of go out for dessert because when we go out I don’t enjoy myself at all. Too worried about the drive home, where I’ll park, all the trivial details that make it so I can’t taste the ice cream anyways. And don’t mistake me, I favor my fear just as much as it favors me. It keeps me comfortable, and how I love to be comfortable, though it’s a shaking uneasy kind of comfort. The sort a doomed man has on death row.

These javelins, these poles sharp at their tips that cascade through me as water, do they hold me up or affix me to the ground?

Would my body be strong enough to stand without them? Would I still know how? The stacking of the feet, the ankles, and the calves. The shuffling against dirt and grain to the steady rhythm of progress.

Sometimes when I have a dream, I feel entirely refreshed of my old perspectives. I see everything brand new, as if I’m a different person. What relief. I know now why our minds wander in the fields of the twilight hours. To abandon the stagnant pond misery we wade in and remember possibility, endless as always.

Sticks and stones may break my bones but words will never hurt me.

What a pretty little lie we peddle children as loves are ended by mouth, laws are written on paper, and wars are declared in ink.

The Dog’s Way

I do wish I could be gentle with myself. I really do. But my way is the dog’s way, anything I don’t like on me I chew up and swallow. I carry everything I hate in my gut because it is all I have to take. And I cannot bear to live hungry.

Would you burn the olive trees if you grew them, if you felt their bark wind under your fingertips like locks of hair? Would you poison the water if it quenched your thirst, if you let the river stones touch your sole? You claim the land is yours, and you’re owed every grain of its sand but someone who loves the land would not demolish its beauty so recklessly. If that is how you treat what is yours, I dread the fate of those you call others.