People have changed
They no longer lock themselves in the bathroom after a fight
They don’t drink with horses in some field on a cold night
No more small dinner parties where the man makes a pass at the neighbor’s wife while she helps with the dishes in the kitchen that’s bathed with convenient half-light that hides a face, a hand
Yeah, things have changed
No walking down the dark lonely streets
No blacking out on the beach as the tide rises and the crabs prance like dancers at your daughter’s recital
No calling an old lover at 3:00 in the morning with a husband dead asleep from too much whisky flowing over cigarette-stained teeth
But maybe I’m making rash assumptions about me and you
Okay, yes … the nightmares do remain and the way people die, that … also is still the same
I guess the pain, too, has not much changed, things still hurt, they still creep along the edges of the wall as they make their way to the bedspread dragging the floor with you unable to breathe because you have decided to just stop the involuntary reflexes that push you forward
Life without breathing is difficult and they say, oh, it was time or an accident, everything natural or accidental in this world without end
The end we continue to contemplate and really care about, even though we have not the slightest idea what it means, and on that point, not much has changed, the way we hold hands with God or a loved one or even a poet
Everything receding away … walking the streets, shaking like some kid whose seen a murder, and then into a field, where the horses stand, and going into the kitchen, kissing and drinking, waking on the sand as the tide tries to pull us out
The recriminations and the yelling, no one listening, running into the bathroom and slamming the door behind, turning the lock one last time
No, I was wrong, not much has changed, really, nothing at all
You’re right, there’s so much living we got to do with this life and then we keep on going on about that end.
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Life boiled down to sustenance and sleep. The rest is gravy. Change on top of that? Who needs it?
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You know it’s bad when even the fights don’t mean anything anymore.
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Great feel to this one
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