13th Moon

So we were trying to decide what to do with our lives..? My sister's voice trails off. It's early Friday evening in the post-Christmas haze, and the little bar is nearly empty. We laugh at the notion; we never get anywhere. She orders another beer, and we talk inappropriate dreams and New Year's plans instead. I'll be in New York for a few days, you know, she says, as I stare at the Brooklyn Brewery taps and feel nothing. The city feels further away than ever. The world.

There is no sleep to be had. I spend my nights in alternate realities, broken characters playing out their turmoil on the screen and seeping into my bath water. They make my stomach hurt. I know I'm grasping at straws; I claw and plead, regardless. The same blood that has coursed through you for 30 years powers you still. It runs thick and dark, infected with years of fear and fervor, of terror and toxins and ugly secrets. The movies serve a welcome break, the relief of someone else's cancer. There was sun today, while I was hiding in my darkened office, there was sun. We haven't seen it in what seems like weeks.

Spring will bring us our lives back again.

You just make sure the one you get,
is the one you wanted, to begin with.