–Edward Hopper, “High Noon”
Suicide. It’s been over six months since I’ve had this urge to google it. Six months ago, I put that urge away. . .put it in a strongbox and swallowed the key.
This is the last time you haunt the house of my brain . Here’s your hat . ..don’t let the unlocked door hit you on the way out.
And here, I hesitate to say, it is six months later and he’s back, Jack. That asshole with the hobnail shoes, exhausted, nauseous, spent. Stomping around in the kitchen again. . .rummaging through the produce drawer, looking for palpable courage.
The long hallway with all the family photos: every last one of those faces emaciated, expressionless. You want to save them. . . load them all into boats, bound for anywhere
but here, where the hurt is.
I mean it is one kind of unholy to go there yourself, but you look into that sea of faces. . .so far from shore. Hands and arms aching all the way to umbilicus that keeps you tethered to heavy heavy heavy.
Holden Caulfield in a Coast Guard boat, waving a white flag. Enough already. Uncle.
Uncle uncle uncle.
tessf 