Day 460, September 28, 2021

True Selves

It rained today. 

Thunder so loud it shook my office. 

I am getting used to talking to people who do not like me. 

Distant memories 

sometimes 

are nearly present. 

The mention of names 

produce ideas, 

from which emanate feelings. 

Discordant music, 

like sand in one’s underwear, 

or the fragrance of someone else’s lunch. 

In my wallet I carry a note 

that I have not read yet. 

It is like a lottery ticket, 

so full of promise. 

I might never read it, 

in order to maintain that possibility 

of millions. 

When I was a child, 

I dreamed of wardrobes that were passages, 

and stepping through into years, 

a lifetime of existing elsewhere, 

away from the war. 

Today I smelled tobacco smoke 

as I walked behind the facility. 

I know the furies of substance. 

I have been released from their vengeance. 

And yet, 

sometimes 

I feel I am only part of the man that remains. 

I remember my first real kiss, 

in the front seat of a Buick. 

It felt like making love 

in a king size bed

a hotel by the ocean. 

Years later, I would lie, 

and say that I was not a virgin, 

that I had made love in a car, 

a Buick, 

to hide my innocence and desperation. 

It is funny the things we will say 

to hide our true selves, 

our delicate selves, 

our fragile selves.

A lot goes on inside a storage container at Florence Night Out last weekend.