Echo

Today was just a day and I don’t know what’s going on with me these days. I’m pretty content at work because lately, they’ve just been giving me stuff to do and leaving me alone and that suits me just fine. I just want to put my headphones on and be alone. It makes me sad to know that I don’t have that many vacation days. My dream travel schedule would look like this:

March–Austin (South By Southwest)
April–Seattle
May–Cleveland (Ethan gets his PhD! Congrats, Dr. Schafer!)
June–Germany, Italy, Amsterdam
July–Hawaii

Linda called as I was leaving work and wanted to know what was going on. She said I sounded down and I just want to be left alone, so I told her that I would call her next week, even though I know that I won’t. Because right now, I’m the only one that I really trust and I’m so tired of how everyone has an opinion on the way I need to be and how I should be living my life and after a while, it starts seeping in. It makes me wish that I had the $50,000 now.

I had lunch with Jake and he always makes me feel calm. He’s the best friend a person can ever ask for and he’s one of the blessings that I count every night when I pray. He’s one of the most amazing souls I’ve ever met and one of the few guys whom I refer to as a Man.

Michael also called today and he did well at school. He’s become quite the fun conversationalist. Sometimes I wish he lived with me. He would wrap me in one of those bear hugs when he knows I’m feeling blue, and even though I’ve spent my whole life being so protective of him, it’s moments like those when I feel completely safe and loved. Michael is my angel.

I wish the guys at work would stop making fun of me for not wanting to date. I’ll go out when there’s someone new to meet, but overall, I just don’t like going through the motions of dating since most of the time I can tell it won’t go anywhere, and I don’t want to be in a relationship right now anyway so nothing is going to go anywhere. I just want to be left alone, with the small circle of people who mean the world to me.

This isn’t finished…

america the day it went cold turkey off of prozac

tonight america feels unsettled
uneasy
like a blister on the brink of burst

the fires of the west have not stopped raging
not nearly enough to mollify the
slow burn of violence rumbling in its belly
digging at the seams

the moon hangs high
exuding indifference

detachment

self-loathing

fear

neglected in its own defiance
a rotton child plotting with an axe

66 runs like a vein through the heartland
feeding off the windtossed litter of the desolate masses
but it’s the silence that feeds the slow burn
the silence that eats itself from the inside out
until there’s nothing left to be remembered by

on the shoulder near cleveland
a bum wanders the freeway
a forgotten man
following the twisted metal guardrail
through the tunnel of his existence
stumbling on a paved road that laps up
the hollow spaces in between
but never once choking on the things that
were meant to be kept

and if you ask him in a way that he knows you exist
he’ll tell you

he’s heard this place whispering
when it thinks no one is listening
towards a heaven overrun by sycophantic wings
flapping to the rhythm of a rhythmless beat
praying for an upended big rig
or a six-car clot to end its misery
and begging someone to touch its emptiness
to really feel it
before dropping it back into that dark
hungry space
where everything that is found
was once lost
and loss is the blanket which covers us
when our insides becomes too expansive to be named.

and you and i?

we slept in our beds
and dreamed our dreams
that shielded us from the nightmares
never aware of the world outside
swirling in its own misery
contemplating its meaning
until it awoke to find itself a butterfly in
its own dream
floundering deeper into a bottomless gulch
that was never given a name

and when i wake
you will not remember me

one day i will land softly on the tip of your tongue
a butterfly kiss that’s more a twitch than a tug
briefly reminding you of a truth that preceded the universe
and you will remember a time
from somewhere far away
in some distant memory
once
when you were loved
by someone who existed