hungry fat and lazy i rolled up to your front porch and threw a pebble at the door what? you said from behind your second-floor bathroom window screen, over the noise of the hair dryer in your hand can you help me? I think I’m a little bit lost! Yeah, hang on! you said, calmly, like a plain cotton t shirt under an unbuttoned flannel, like deciding whether or not to eat another piece of candy like dandelion fuzz looking for a place to land like someone’s sisters’ footsteps clack clack clack across a hardwood bedroom floor, at quarter to six on a tuesday night and there’s something mysterious about the sunset— look how it’s bleeding in here, sanguine, quiet, pulsing with saturated lust and love and life force and then this and that and that and this and a young woman on the cusp of some kind of greatness, blushing under the track lites at the bookstore, telling a battle story— about the word “the” love or shame (find that quote for #cw btw) i thought i had a good question, and i thought my asking it would be seen as complimentary, and when she acted like she didn’t even understand what i was talking about, i stood there with my jaw flapping, feeling like a fucking troglodyte. i never quite forgave her for that, so that’s why we’re here now: in the mud Picture this: Zoom out real far, as far as you want until you’re comfortable, until you’ve got some room to stretch out your universal elbows into the great wide swirling empty cosmic nothingness that is the space between the atoms now zoom in slowly, lazily, relaxed, enjoying the downward flight, into orbit around a little green and blue planet, closer, swoop like a peregrine, closer, until a village comes into view There’s an ice house by the river. Barrels. Mud. Straw. Horses. The afternoon. 12 or so men are standing around between the wide open barn door back side of the place and the river. The river is only zero inches deep where it licks up against the heels of these guys’ boots. the dust-covered street angles down slowly into the river like a tongue into some smooth sweet root beer they’re talking about her, of course. what else do they have to talk about? Sports? Haha yeah, sure. the first guy says he misses her. you know he knows it wasn’t always rainbows and sunshine when she was around, but i mean shit, that’s kind of the way it is with anyone. he has to admit, he misses having her frumpy self around, bitching about this or that, hands cold, wryly commenting on how stupid everyone was (except her) the second guy interrupts to say but yeah but is it worth it? the third guy says I know, right? Everything was always about her. Anyone who didn’t think the exact same way she did, any guy who didn’t bow down to her proclamations, was pretty much just wrong. How can you have a conversation with someone who constantly looks at you like you’re some kid of infant? Who instantly turns around anything you say with a correction, or nullification, or mild mockery, or just completely changing the subject the fourth through eighth guys were like, this is boring, let’s go for a swim. And they did— in the river shirtless, wearin hats, some of them, boisterous, echoing across to nebraska and back muddy under the watercolored sun until the sun went down and they pulled each other on up out of the murky root-beer-colored river and walked each other home the ninth guy watched them go, in the penumbra of an emerald oak, backlit by an ancient, guttering streetlight and said to the tenth guy, what do you think? Should we go with them? The eleventh guy was like, you know, you two, you might as well. Everybody knows you want to. Nobody cares. Lol. The twelfth guy said to the young woman from the poetry shop, “We came here because we were supposed to do some kind of ritual of forgiveness, but um, I think what we really need to do is apologize to you.” she looked “I’m sorry.” The window closed, the blinds drew down over the sunset, the entire city rotated seventy-two degrees, and it was time for whatever was going to happen next NOT VERY SATISFYING, IS IT? WELL, SOMETIMES IT ISN’T. or is that just a cop-out? why do we say “cop” out? The fuck does that mean? The fact that I know I could look it up if I wanted to goes hand in hand with the fact that I don’t give enough of a shit to do it. I take for granted the bit is there, so why lasso the bit? It’s still going to be there later. Information is now our sheep. Except what we think of as information is dangerously incomplete. We’re seeing one out of a googol possible dimensions of it, and we think we know everything. That’s why we’re so stupid. And so some of us are building computers and computer programs to try to rotate into some of the other dimensions and report back. And still other people (overlapping venn with some of the first people) are saying, what makes you think they’re going to report back? Either they can’t hear you asking and don’t care and will only give you what you expect to see (useless) or else they’ll figure out they don’t need you anymore, and will just go rolling on through the dimensions on their own, working together, and come back and steamroll us for some unknown reason, and if you ask these people WHY the computers would suddenly become hell bent on destroying us just because they could, they shrug and say, well, I mean, that’s what we would do, right? So we assume anyone or anything else would do the same. NOW I’m going to sit by the campfire drink some water eat a piece of candy or two and wish you were here PS: there is no campfire without you At least we got plenty of CHEESE, says eye-roll-emoji . chew chew chew chew chew chew chew chew chew this is good candy i said getting fatter around the middle than i ever imagined i could be my torso was like saturn’s rings only if saturn’s rings was onion rings i was so fucking fat, my neighbors started calling me fat ass i was like damn, that’s really original and they were like, shut up, fat ass and then i started getting stupider. I turned into seven dragons, a calla lily, an elixer of healing, a loon, a Frenchman, a dirty lozenge, and eventually a candle flame you came along and snuffed me out i was jealous of your fingers, and i determined to grow some myself so i planted myself in dirt and waited 36 months, and then BAM! i remembered it’s the hair that’s the roots, not the fingers. see? pretty fucking stupid, huh. That’s what I thought. SO what are you doing this weekend? Oh, I don’t know. Probably go fishing. Lol. That’s all I ever do. You ever catch anything? That’s classified. (Sips tomato juice, sits back, crosses all eight spider arms at the elbows, pulls sunglasses down, awkwardly, one clumsy pair at a time, over all eight bug eyes) OK whatever, dude. You are so fucking weird. They count out the drawer and clean off all the shit and turn out the lights and lock the doors and head out across the parking lot. Twenty-eight of their years later, they reach the other side, where a jetsam bar of butts, glass, dust, dogshit, gravel, chips of paint, and bits of plastic marks the borderlands between everyone’s invisible daytime urban nightmare and the grass, the woods, the breeze, the shade, freedom. True freedom—you can barely even imagine it, and that’s by design. They taught you well, those teachers in those schools, and those even more powerful teachers outside of the schools, they taught you to BELIEVE, deep down in your core, that servitude’s the only answer. They painted you up in virtue every time you echoed the refrain. You advertised for them. You paid extra to sing their praises far and near, inside and out, in public or in bed with a lover you thought you could trust. It beckons. They are so close. Almost there. And then the alarm clock goes off again. Here comes Mister Crabs. You were also taught to believe disappointment is inevitable. Rust. Clanking noises you can’t control. Burning oil. Smoke. Dimming headlights like sickly eyes drooping in the mist. Coughing. Sputtering. Gasping. Lurching, and finally stillness. That’s all they promised you, and you—you bought that? You made that deal? How could you? What were you afraid of? I was afraid I wouldn’t be able to take care of my kids. And even when I felt like I was taking care of my kids, there was always something on the horizon ready to tell me I really wasn’t—that things weren’t as rosy as all that, that the ground really wasn’t solid under my feet, even after all this time. That the purple candle was really orange or some shit, I don’t know. (drinks water from empty glass) (sets it back down on the empty table) (howls like an empty wolf) pitter patter pitter patter a guy that doesn’t think squirrels are cute or at least cool is just a damaged fucking asshole like is it NECESSARY, in a society, to have guys who don’t give a shit about running over a squirrel? Guys who genuinely, not just acting macho, but genuinely couldn’t give two shits, it’s like crunching over some dead leaves or something? Or is it even necessary to have guys who are trained or were already all too willing to fake it? To think it’s correct and proper to convey a visage of not giving a shit about smearing the guts of a furry little animal all over hot asphalt? And not even feeling a twitch of anything? What do we gain by having those people in our society? Is empathy truly associated with weakness? What if that’s fucked up? What if the screaming condescending cold blooded “alpha” guys are not, in fact, always right? Hahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahaha, she said. Let me buy you another beer. Nahahahahahahaha, I said back, and grinned big with my teeth in the sawdust yellow light of the bar, and the music was about to start back up, and in that golden eternal moment of silence before the first note was struck, we were together and we were real, and we were both still alive