ginger snapped.

I am running shaking fingertips over bruised arms and puncture wounds

where the nurses couldn’t find a vein

everything is heavier today

my eyes are focusing again

and I wonder, what if I am?

what if I am sick?

in a real way.

I am shifting in bed trying to hold a pen to paper,

looking forward to dinner and a movie with Sam,

looking forward to being touched without a stethoscope.

I’ve been fighting this fever for twelve hours and losing,

spent a week dreaming tidal waves,

losing grasp of hands drowning in the undertow,

ending perfect Caribbean blue,

dreaming children and cross-country road trips,

standing outside the mind’s projection room,

watching each moment fragment

a kaleidoscopic vision of poisoned hopes.

and I’m hesitant to name an antagonist;

fever, dreams, waking life,

with equal reticence of putting another egg in another basket,

but we have to begin someplace.

I am pulling back fabric from the needles watching helpless as a few slipped stitches scatter down unraveling the tapestry that has been our lives together for almost twelve years.

Realizing for the first time: I cannot fix this.

And I crawl beneath blankets holding the warmth of the dog close as if my life depended on it, but cotton and batting isn’t strong enough to keep our world from shattering down around me.

Life doesn’t owe me any favors, but I could sure use a break.

It’s late now and I’m in bed
smoking, sipping on some Southern Comfort you left on the bookshelf
before you took that last flight out.

you are solid standing across from me

watching the blue tides of your eyes ebb and flow

swallowing my impatience

because I want to step closer,

but I know you’re sorry you have to work

and I wonder on the sweetness of you

under fluorescent skies 

after you walk me in brushing snow from my hair

and I think how I just want to fall into bed with you

smiling bewildered while you talk miles and miles

in languages I fail to comprehend,

but not tonight.

Autumn temperatures and sunshine are a contradiction to the date so I took you out to the countryside and we walked the Bluegrass hills my family owns to drink and make our own fun.

We ran out of bullets before beer, but you taught me how to shoot your gun and I showed you how to make a fire.

Transition.

Wish you would ever let me pay for something, but it doesn’t seem to be your nature. I know I kept you out too late and made you drink whiskey like a Kentucky boy because after a day in the country you owe it to the soil on your shoes and campfire smoke in your clothes to throw a few back.

Besides, you made me drink vodka and I wasn’t ready to call it a night.

Transition.

I like these nights like I like my whiskey,

Straight, no chaser, and one after another.

How do I say that in Russian?

Tell me, what would I say?

Don’t go.

Something else?

As if there exists words would weave some magic into the world and stop you from leaving with your orders and your pride.

As if either of us have ever said it out loud.

I would rather say nothing as we always do, nothing except

I’ll see you later, okay?

or

Miss you now and then.

or, more simply,

Goodnight.

Those words have always been good enough.

Yesterday, after he and Kaylah emerged from the guest room a little worse for wear and lacking in champagne, Johnny said I was a tornado. I guess that’s about right.

tor·na·do

Noun:

1. A mobile, destructive vortex of violently rotating winds having the appearance of a funnel-shaped cloud and advancing beneath a large…
2. A person or thing characterized by violent or devastating action or emotion.

Nothing gets written if you don’t write, is something I notice all the time…

No truer words!