BEAR IT - COME ALONG

I am empty. I am lost. My heart barely beats. My brain is grey, soft and smooth. No thoughts, no thoughts encourage me to go on. My pen won’t move. Morning is dawning. The newspaper has not yet arrived and I don’t give a damn. There will be nothing in it to free me from my doldrums. What I have just written is a lie–but I gotcha, didn’t I?

I’ve got a lover who’s young but old enough that I don’t have to worry about being arrested for raping a minor. There’s a bit of doubt in my mind about how the law looks at same sex love. They can look at us all they want. We’re not afraid as we each have our birth certificates in our wallets. I’m 26. She’s 22. I’m a he, she’s a she. Gotcha again!

This silliness has come from nowhere and I am most grateful. This morning was dire and my only wish was to give up, not go near the darkness of my Dell’s screen. Everything around me was despondent and it definitely, positively, was not my fault. It began at 10 P.M. when old, bearded Morpheus gave me a rabbit punch, put his foot on my chest and warned me not to wake up yet.

My mother was in the kitchen, percolating coffee in the bent pot on the gas stove. Her bathrobe sleeve was fodder for the little flame. I saw her run, heard her screams and I, a mere ten years old, could not make her drop to the cement floor and roll herself over and over. The scene lives, is a undying replay, out of my control.

Somehow I step over her and see the yellow moon lighting the midnight sky. A moonbeam slips and falls on my father’s house. The sky flares with lightning. Flames fly in the wind. Fire trucks clang down the country road too late. A fireman finds me crouched in a banyan tree. My clothes are sooty. Father was incinerated. Oh, they didn’t use that word. That is a dream word so I shouldn’t have to picture, ‘burned to ashes.’

Thru it all I am struggling, trying hard to open my eyes, find a comfortable spot in my bed. Peter Pan flutters by and tells me to ‘think lovely thoughts.’ Jerk!

It’s a struggle but I am getting close, closer. Yes, here she is, my 17 year old gorgeous lover. She’s unashamedly naked. I put my arms out to her. ‘Sandy, come here. Lie down next to me. Hold me. Chase my parents away. They won’t condemn us. They were young once, too.’ Mephistopheles decides at the most inconvenient time to let my old fashioned alarm clock jar me awake.

Guess what! I gotcha again. I slept well and hope you do now. GOODNIGHT!