Inner Dialogue 2

       I talked a good hello but she talked an even better good bye ~ Richard Brautigan




Hustle

---please don't call me 'hon' or 'sweetie' when I drive thru each morning for my coffee. Please don't be so familiar. You don't know me. All you know is what I like to drink and how I drink it.
This reminds me of a clerk I knew years ago that worked at the local liquor store. Everyone passing through with their case of beer, bottle of cheap or fine wine was her 'guy' or 'girl'. I winced when I heard these all too phony terms of endearment. They were hollow and meaningless. Sentiments meant to blow sugar up one's ass. A habit likely acquired from a lifetime of menial service jobs and hustling for tips.



Blood and Wine

---you always know just the right words to say before we're about to say good bye. It's as if you instinctively know I may wake up one day and decide not to accept your call. I can hear it in your voice and God, I love your voice. The lilt in my hello when I pick up the phone and the happy timbre in yours when I admit that I miss you. This distance between us causes me to feel as though I am dragging my heart around like an anvil. It's not uplifting, romantic or sweet. The yearning threatens to kill me most days because I know what we are when we're together and there are days now that I wished we'd never met. You are there in your crumbling kingdom and I am here in my solitary fortress. Sometimes I look at the droplets of wine that stain the scarf I wore the day we met, the Chateau Lafite.... and I forget it's not blood but wine.


Hourglass

---thinking of the young woman I saw just a few hours ago at the market. Maybe she was 25? The drugs coursing through her bloodstream causing her to twitch involuntarily. She was still beautiful, a petite blonde thing, I swear she could've been a ballerina. Maybe she was. Perhaps that's why she snorted or shot up whatever was ravaging her insides at the moment. To maintain her wiry thin frame. I watched as she attempted to have some semblance of normal composure in the check out line. Her basket containing seaweed chips, multivitamins, laxatives and a large bottle of Grey Goose. The balance between body harmony and self destruction. Much like her soft, angelic appearance was belying her manic nervous energy and the tragic far away look in her eyes. Some people burn up their lives as though they have a wick at both ends or more sand in the hour glass than the rest of us.







Disclaimer :

• This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, businesses, places, events, locales, and incidents are either the products of the author’s imagination or used in a fictitious manner. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, or actual events is purely coincidental.