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___________________________
I'll smile,
Play the card.
Like I have nothing to lose, everything to gain.
You listen, to my words and not everything else.
Don't get tired, I tell myself. Keep up with the game, with the lie that you are OK. (I am not okay.)
Tired? Yeah, I'm just a little tired, I say.
Did you hear what I didn't say? No, of course not.
I won't say that I am weary, and angry. . .
He told me that anger is a gift. Is it?
Today, maybe. It is the only feeling that is constant.
Sadness.
Another old friend of mine, of yours. We don't talk about her often, do we? We tend to keep her to ourselves.
She arrives with the smoke, that green haze in the kitchen, and in the living room. They fill your eyes, create a home in my lungs. I'm choking.
Sadness comes with her friend loneliness, and together they hide within the scars. The ones that lie underneath your shorts, all of them lies that got you to fold.
You were dealt too many cards. I'm sorry, you fold.
You break down and you crumble, you pass away at the sight of that rubble that is the foundation of your parents' marriage. I'm so sorry, you fold.
They fold, too, in different ways. For them it looks like the blunt that takes them to a weird place.
No, not to a better day.
To a different world entirely;
To one without fields.
They don't know what is real. But we do.
What's real, is the quiet festering drowned out by loud music and alcohol. Why do we never talk about this?
I'm sorry. I forget that I am the one holding the deck in my hands. I never knew how to talk about it with you, either. Until I lost my poker face.
Here is what I can do, I will write it all down.
Maybe this time you'll hear me out.
21.