so I have to tell you something

she laughed head tilted right or maybe left looking over across the pitted table music loud wondering why we came here no good food but lots of drunks

we were drunks though she said if it is around five in the am or pm who knows if you are using Jim Beam as mouthwash then I suppose it must be true though that is not what we were down for surely desperate and empty afternoons in that small apartment you were always flaming out of jobs I could never even get

cigarette addictions and daydreams play like nightmares in the backseats of taxi cabs asking to go to bars you don't even want to sit in to pick fights with the locals or the bouncer knowing you will lose but whatever the violence is like an end in itself perhaps

that is not really you is it you are not really that guy at the end of the night cornered and futilely furious you are not really that empty seat at the family table that no one wants filled you are not really that golem and you are not really mud or clay you are man aren't you man but a reflection man but angry

she loved you but do you care nothing right moving away

anyway, sitting out on the porch with Alexander and he is trying to understand me but I am like a hollow shell he thinks so I tell him to fuck off even if it is funny

he didn't mean it to be funny though that hollow shell thing

stranded in 1996 I am I think or do I think it because I am who knows the spinning goes on either way no one cares what you think or is that what I think how can we know Sam looks sad she always looks sad but she is stronger than anyone I know even though no one can really know anyone right

so I have to tell you something I have wanted to tell you for years through all the haze of work and life and kids and factory and home there is something I have wanted to say as the cradles went to kindergartens went to junior schools went to well you know the rest there was something I always wanted to tell you but never did

there is this sinking feeling of the unresolved the unrequited not in love but life yet you tell me that is crazy and in the convertible on the road to the lake I can almost think you must be right

until we get to that beach the sun is too bright and too hot and it burns away the last of the things we had to say

photo by Natalie Lochwin