notageek

that good night will gentle you
then as a colt broken will you hitch yourself to the haul of dawn

It will seem clear in the morning.
Then as night descends and you breach that dyke, broach that dialectic
then you will begin to hurt
then your liver will begin to hate you

you will hurt
you will rage at those who thank you for the opportunity to witness your rage
they will turn the other cheek and you will hate them for the self-righteousness spread thickly on that crust of piety
like the calm lee of bridge pilings whipped dark and shaking in gusts
your rage rendered shallow and impotent
your speech adequate to explain neither the rage nor the poison it becomes when swallowed

and there is no happy ending
no home to return to save the one you make
sometimes there is no escape from your n-dimensional maze except your n+1 orthogonal
no righteous defeat of debate except what keeps you alive, or sane.

It isn’t the beloved dead who haunt me; they flicker through conversations, their ghost our shared memories. Their hand-me downs are my pans, my rugs, my dishes–all of them with the rubbed-down edges and chips that remind me of their lives, not their deaths.

It’s the ones I didn’t know quite enough, love quite enough, or sometimes the ones I didn’t watch die who haunt me. It’s only a few, and it’s only so often, but it is quite enough. Last night I woke up crying from a dream where I knew ahead of time but could not stop death’s coming, and the dream-grief crumpled me at me knees and I lay flattened and sobbing. That was just the dream.

In life I know I have been lucky, but much luck is, like a vacuum, defined by what it lacks. Like the temporarily abled, it takes but one blow and you are shoved quickly and muffledly to the other side. No, I don’t know what it’s like, and I would never claim to, and I hope I never have to–but I have the barest inkling, and I hope that helps if my other shoe drops, because otherwise all of this crap is for nothing.