11.02.2007

was rereading old writings, and this is true now, as then.
***

They send me an herb garden as a thank you gift. She rubbed my shoulder in the car, and I took the wrong exit. I called him small; he thought me proud. I missed my father, and wished for fuller days.

I could leave here too. I could quit this circle, these older friends, their mistakes already made. I could leave the admitting of lonely, of wanting what they have. I could leave tonight, sit in a hotel in Chattanooga, post my resume on craigslist. I could leave.

I wait for the call, wait by not waiting. Make plans, go camping, get drunk, don’t check to see who has written. Surrounded by fresh babies and women swollen with ready and new, I repeat ‘everything in me is a bird’ and kiss new foreheads and fingers.

My life will be filled with worse things: a long hospital stay, my mother will die too quick, the long and public humiliation, a not-worth-it affair. I will weather them with pride, and friends will call me brave. These slow, lonely days however, just may be my quiet end.

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