Carry on Dancing

It was easier when Ella was withering away,
and when Rosa was tossing and turning in my bed,
or even when Tasha was singing god aweful songs while kicking away in the swing;
it at least gave me moments of hope.

Now, another bleary winter in a place I never got to know because the speed limits were too high and the roads all led to work, or an angry lover, or straight back to the screen. Old friends are all gone, atrophied without use - old anchors of emotion eroded by marriages and births, sometimes multiples of one or both.

You said it so well; that comes a time when in sweet reflection seems quite aptly to be the pinnacle of your life. I swear I fought that from the moment it left your lips, but now dragged down the road of rotten decisions I know I have never been as content as then; when just for a moment we invented a hopeful future too hot to hold on to.

I get so tired of new people, old people even; I can only try halfhearted to break into conversation that leads nowhere. I just want to read poems to you while you fall asleep. I want to sneak out of your room with its squeaky door, past your roommates in their pajamas still huddled on the couch, out into the brittle night. A look back and the window shade is open a crack, and I can almost make out our shadows still flitting across the walls. I close the car door, the radio just a tender hum while I close the book on us for another well written night. What do I do now? Start again, again?

Well, I never write when I am happy - so here is another goddamn article you can print out and put in a folder called resentment issues or mania or detachment disorder. You can sprinkle it with unresolved issues too, if you see fit, but really it is just a testament to those words that haunt me. It is just a plaque that assures you, that with that little trick of the tongue, you win.

So?

The problem is that you left me hanging - in more ways than one, but primarily in the way that you offered no cure for this. You pinned the tail on the donkey, but it was just a raw existentialist observation that we often live our happiest moments unknowingly in our earliest years, and for some reason of horrid brain chemistry or twist of fate, we cannot ever vault any higher.

You win. I'm wasting away, my critical faculties becoming mush - I am self diagnosed with failure to thrive. I don't need a cold shower or a run in the wind to break the fever; it is a condition that persists of the spirit.

You used to tell me a cluster of nice things, (that I have long since mentally misplaced out of unintentional self preservation) and frankly I could use those right about now. I can't do another kiss on new lips because they are out of time and sync with what I know I love. I can't return a letter or fake a smile for lust anymore. I admire from a distance that almost seems satirical.

I even say sometimes that maybe I just haven't met the right girl - and then like a loudspeaker or shrill microphone feedback I recall your bedtime confessional. You haunt me, keep me pecking away at this shit; and hopefully our moments are just enough in amber and stasis that you can keep moving me forward in dance when my limbs are just too drunk and weary.