Sometimes I just write whatever is in my head. Tonight is just such an occurrence. Tumbling out, no editing, no going back. The raw deal, as it were. 

 

I am rifling through
pictures of you
wondering if things are better.
Wondering if
the hurt is tempered.

 

I see joy
real and faked.
Humor forced
and humor sung with outspread arms.

 

I see these moments
that define
the life we lived and the life
we aren’t able to share anymore.

 

I miss you.

 

There is a hole, a large one, that grows in my soul, eats into my head, grabs my hands and yanks me forward where I don’t want to be.

It rakes curlicues up in the yard as it dances unwholesome, bone-rattling dirges in concentric rings about my house. I see it from here, where I sit, near the boarded up window.

I have no power over it, no veve to carve into my soul’s porch. No bag to shake at it and make it stop.

The rum and the smokes are all gone. The last of the jokes have been told.

Time to go.
Time to go.