Ghosts
I recently started calling my parents by their first names
it occurred right about the time I stopped saying grace at the table
instead I just bow my head and silently respect popular delusions
It’s a symptom of an illness that I have
you have it to
this illness is gripping my generation like a heavy weight champion
strangling his affinity for high heeled shoes and feeling pretty
in titty bars and tribal tattoos and overblown machismo
so transparent I feel embarrassed for him because he doesn’t have enough sense not to
his disguise is good enough he’s fooled himself, but no one else
it’s like junk mail, zits, doubt
we all have it
we’re all, despite our noble attempts
growing up
growing old
dying very very slowly
I remember when I was young and I didn’t care if the earth was flat or not
All I cared about was the smell of summer
I had a bicycle, ten dollars generously loaned from my ever disapproving parents
and a collection of Pokémon cards that would make the kids on my school bus weep with envy
and that was all I needed
I was an adventurer
and even now I try to recapture that sense of awe and wonder that made being small so much better
than being big
I remember the pure pleasure of running
just running as fast as your scuffed sneakers would carry you
over cool wet grass as the sun sets rosy red and orange like a slow motion apocalypse
the creak slam of screen doors
and the table is already set waiting for me
tonight we’re having fried chicken, peas, mashed potatoes, and a tall glass of cold milk
and later, after a hot bath
I will find no struggle in falling asleep
nothing haunts
nothing worries
no nothing ever conceived could be as beautiful
as the absence of pain
the sticky world of childhood has been reduced to gum stuck on the underside of a barstool
we raise our glasses penitently to the memory of it
and stumble out into the snow to smoke cloves and wonder
will the future be as beautiful as the past?
I think not
I don’t believe in heaven
but I do believe in ghosts
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