Dexter Gordon

Dexter Gordon

He said write something in a sad tone

create words that make people feel sadness

It’s a challenge

because I don’t know your sadness

My sadness is different than your sadness

which is different from my mother’s sadness

which is different from Obama’s sadness

which is different from the woman behind the cash register at Burger King at midnight on a weekday’s sadness

So I how can I make you feel sadness?

I could talk about what makes my family sad

Living on different coasts

Tattoos

Giving up on the Christian god

Dead dogs

Watching his wife die and him not letting anyone touch her things for eleven years

Anorexia

Alcoholics

Divorced then married then divorced then married then divorced then married

Motorcycle accidents

Cancer

But that isn’t your sadness

That’s your sympathy

your pity even

So I could talk about what should make you

as a citizen of earth

feel sadness for

Sweatshops

Global warming

Genocides in Africa that no one likes talking about

Starving children

The fact that every three minutes someone is raped

But you aren’t that polar bear on the lonely iceberg

or the 12 year old that has to join an army in order to survive

So I could talk about what makes me feel sadness

“I’ll never let go Jack, I promise”

Remembering eighth grade

Sitting in a Starbucks and listening to my friend cheerfully try to explain to me how he’s not going to let the cocaine become addicting this time

Knowing that I can’t stop my friend getting hit by her dad

But this is my sadness

I can’t make you feel it