—IT KEEPS ME RUNNING

 

 

Don’t Just Stand There

 

     This morning, I read an article in The Bismarck Tribune entitled, “How to Have a Difficult Argument.” 

     I ate a peyote button beforehand but didn’t tell a soul, not even the pooch who knew too much already.

     For once, the words made perfect sense—laid out like steps to a ladder. My wife was standing right there beside me at the stove as I repeated certain parts and phrases, her slapping my head with a spatula as if we were both in a Hanna-Barbera cartoon.

     I knew then that I’d been trying too hard to love her, to make her love me again after all I’d done, because now it was just sand down there, the Gobi, everything dry as an iguana taking its last gasp.

     She said, “Jesus son,” and smacked me again like my mom would when she walked the trailer topless and I failed to comment.

     I knew I loved her, though, my wife, not my mother, because fate is painted on every man’s soul somewhere.

     “I was a broken girl, you know?” my wife said chewing on a pepper sprout.

     When I reached for her hand, she actually let me take it—the gift of a lifetime or eternal forever.

     Behind us, the kettle on the burner kept whistling. It sounded like a train going somewhere we’d never been before.