x-x-x-x-x

Because we are socialized and socialized to ignore the insecurity we are socialized to deny, we who grow big face hair pretend security.

I lay in the bed she died in. It feels right to lay where a love one dies. The television is about five feet wide. An opulence beyond by comfort. A kid about five, a music student, once said why do you have such a tiny TV?

Smoke one of the light cigarettes that were her brand, the pack laying on the back porch table in a tiny, temporary shrine. Lay not sleeping and not sleeping and not sleeping and now weeping, then finally wake up before anyone and take a walk alone.

Leave alone. Fly alone. Miss the connecting flight and spend the night alone in an airport somewhere, wandering as we do and laying on the bench not sleeping. A hispanic young man and his mother find me. Jesus, he says, is asking that I give him a year. He looks at me with pity and compassion. That sounds like a good plan at the time. He refers I Corintians Thirteen which is beautiful wisdom about love.

Roll in the unloving bench, comforted barely by a mom and her eight year old daughter also stranded for the night. Wander some more. Find the sanctuary in the morning and sit with a crying woman and we share her sorrow and my distress.

Joseph pick this week to not pay his bill, insisting, your work is poor I won’t pay. Pretty sure the work isn’t poor. Rivka says that’s just what jerks like him do.

Rock bottom or at least a rock.

–iLL

5/04/2024