--WE BOTH DESERVE TO SEE THIS THROUGH

 

                                                           No Direction Home

 

            She wants the sun in her mouth, to swallow it whole, be scalded from the inside out.  But even that would not be enough.

            Her husband is a scratched record on repeat, a smiley face written with blood.  Can’t he see the broken dinghy sinking into the sea?  When will he stop trying to be Atlas, Gandhi, Jesus, Harry Potter, Mother Teresa, Dr. Phil?

            It’s cruel, yet she wishes she was the coat-rack thin widow.  Then there’d be no instruction, no direction home, and the ocean’s arms could have her, crush her, drown her like she deserves.

            The crow picking at her plate with its wet, yellow eyes has a reason to be here.  Everything else is a sham, a hoax, trickery with a fake, suntan grin.

            Coconuts kill people.  Water kills people.  Yet a child is born every three seconds anyway.

            Her mother told her she was no better than one of Manson’s girls.  Her mother wants a divorced daughter, a jailed daughter, an invisible daughter.

            And here he comes, holding a drink tray like it’s a Bible, like it’s a gun, which in a way, it is—each swig a bullet full of dust.  There’s not enough tequila in this entire fucking country, not enough sperm, no embryos. 

            The taxidermied  sun, the waxen marauders and the fake breast floating devices in string bikinis—all of it is enough to make her start de-limbing herself with a dull blade.

            No one really knows why the sun sets, why stars fall and babies die.  No one knows why a passing shadow sometimes becomes a garrote that squeezes and squeezes, but never quite tight enough to finish the job.

 

            The sun wants to wound us.  Even the crows are untrustworthy, stealing frites, stealing melon slices, filching a toddler from the middle of the pool in broad daylight. 

We melt like white chocolate yet there are ice cubes in your eyes, you lips stitched with black thread, the surrounding skin raw, red and puffy, an old wound that looks freshly slit.  When we first started there was no masochism, no punishment and you so often purred or hummed symphonies—Vivaldi’s “Four Seasons,” “Moonlight Sonata,” “A Little Night Music.”

            Wounds, wounds, there are wounds everywhere.  Take the obese orphan boy for example, him with his ketchup frown, slumped like Jabba the Hut on a barstool, raising a cheek to fart because he can now.  Or the widow who wants to weave her flesh into bone, become skull and stalk, a sign with no direction home.  All this while the Hispanic activities director dances poolside urging everyone to join along, to, “Move it!  Move it!”

            Does anyone see the broken dinghy sinking into the sea?  I do.

            You mirrored aviators make me look like a stranger, a felon moments before the crime.  We came here because we had cried enough, because the house kept screaming, kept repeating, kept terminating what we both wanted so badly.

            Don’t you see?  The sun, surf and pool are simply actors, ineffective placebos.  None of this is real.  None of this is enough.  He only balm of consequence is for you to finally unlock the chains, remove the vest bomb and realize that it wasn’t you.  You did not kill our child.  The bathtub did.  He water did.  But you, of all people, are innocent.