I’m done drinking glass bottoms to get drunk, so now all that’s left is pretending to. Confess a small truth to hide the big lie, mistake another name again. Talk all night and through my hat. All of the sudden clam up, slam shut. Get asked. What? Said I was feeling like a lemon in that yellow lamp light. What? Said I was. Better you watch me close now. Yeah you better. About to split or get real mean. Feel bad for not feeling much of a way at all, after all. Sit here sad, but about the wrong thing. Squeeze deep inside my seat, nail myself down, lie in wait, punt out, my escape, down the hatch, though of course not really. No, it’s like I said. Yet always the same, always missing, always by a hair, always leaving. I’m living out the same night again and again.
But nice to only hear the sound of your own coat crunching, the rustling of your leaving, the beck and call, sweet song of motion. Swinging arms and legs and sandy soles of feet on stone. I’m the metronome man. Yes, nice to leg it I think, but not one for thinking really. Lost my mind, I think. I’m not all there, barely there, don’t know where it went.
I’m lost a lot, I don’t look ahead when I walk. I keep looking to the right and to the left, but will still miss my turn, hit a dead end. I should turn back, though I don’t want to. Not at all. I can’t decide, short my circuits, never learn. I think dizzy, don’t remember. Whose, er, whose blood’s this on my sleeve anyway, hmn? Click and rattle and creak as I go.
I run but from nothing. Leaves me heaving, I don’t have lungs for this. Hold onto a signpost. I look up it, like legs that run a mile, hey you I say. I chuck up some threadbare line, a hairball. I know I’m not much to look at, stagger through streets, the alleyways. One to skip a couple steps, skip a beat or two too. And for you, if you follow. Forgive me if I’m coming on too strong. Come home with me! I’m the last man on the planet aren’t I? We can go where the wind blows. Hell is to see clearly, isn’t it?
There’s more ways to go about skinning me, but know there’s no meat on my bones. Skin-on only I’m afraid, nothing left to pluck from this back. I’m store bought, cut out. I can be your purse, wide open just for you honey, sure. I hang down in bags, nothing under it all. Still I zip up and down and round about. And why? Force of habit said the rabbit. Because once you start it’s already over isn’t it. Keep it rolling. Can’t stop the motion of the ocean. Ain’t that right. Right-right. Let’s go to the beach.
Out into wide open, I walk and walk and the wind blows and blows until, finally, I just wish it would take me. No, not like that, not yet, not at all.
I made it out the maze, made it this far. It’s all stretch and open wide now. Yell until your lungs give out and not a soul to hear a thing here. I wish all my teeth would fall out already, give me rest. Keep my mouth shut. For a change. Change me like seasons, like leaves from a tree. Something I can count on.
Waiting for salt air to tell me something true, but I’ll wait all night and I will, I will.
Walking by the wave break, the wind blowing, where I try to think back to what she’d told me . . . It’s wrong to only give, as much as it is to only take. And to take that which you owe, to then go and give it away. To give is to take too. My mother hopes and dreams like anyone else.
Don’t worry ma, I won’t buy you stones to get them back when you’re gone. And I’m sorry I’ve been bad. I know I’m wrong. I always am.
But why only tell me now? You’re not here. What good does that do me now? I’m away. Too little, I’m brittle, have no ear for her anymore. The fear is gone. I’ve gone off, smell off, something wrong. Frozen in place, cast into a shape. Rigid, no ply, not anymore. Put on a brave face and face my fate. Bring a plume, tip me over easy and watch me fall flat into dust.
You seem to be doing well. Me, I couldn’t let it go, but I had to put it down, let it rest. Had to let it lie and be still. Or hold it down, or under. Against its will, or something or other. Let the wind drag voices down into dark seawater.
Handwave her away, disperse a djinn, you’re eating away at my soul, you’re wrong. Drown out the song, evil spirit you, out of my sight, be gone!
You’re not even here anyway, I mutter under my breath. But I don’t know why, why I would want to whisper while dying this slow death. A death by a thousand cuts, gusts of wind turn my clothes into sails.
I never look up, I’m a pig, I don’t care much for the stars at all, I don’t see them like other people do, I don’t see them at all. But when I die I’d like to explode too, I think. Now that would really be something, wouldn’t it? A star is a black hole in infancy.
Skip some stones, skip some steps, skip off. Always something missing. I need to end this story. Fast forward to morning, skip the part where I just sit around in silence. Half empty I’d been halfway up all night wishing. But nothing.
Anyway.
Sing into the wind at sunrise. Wander around the beach until people slowly start turning up again. Pick up sea shells idly and throw them as far off into the sea as I can. I don’t know why. I would’ve liked to take a pretty one home with me, but I guess not.
Selah.