You’ll understand when you’re older.
The amount of times people told me that. The amount of things I’ll never understand. Apart from what it’s like to fire a rifle, I guess…and never getting to say goodbye…
“Hey, boy. Snap out of it – they’re coming back.”
The salt water fizzed through the holes of my shoes and reminded me where I was. The woman beside me and I had been belly-down on the shoreline for long enough that waves had dug a trench under us.
The rattle of less distant gunfire echoed from the crumbling suburb, past our footprints in the sand and over our heads – she
on the day we are supposed to meet,
i will be too sad to get out of bed.
destiny will knock insistently on my door, will
stick its head through the opening and call my name,
softly and then louder when i do not respond.
it will pick its way through the chaos of
my bedroom, over shoes and socks and sweaters
i haven’t worn in a week and shake my shoulder.
i will close my eyes and roll over.
i will have eaten too much the day before. i will have not
eaten at all the day before. i will feel like my hands
are only good for dropping second chances on the floor next to
dirty underwear and last week’s failed midterm and half full cups
Day 17: How To Bury Your Mother by camelopardalisinblue, literature
Literature
Day 17: How To Bury Your Mother
Start with the feet; push down
handfuls of earth over stubbed toes
and childhood injuries--
(remember the time she pulled your hair,
called you a bitch and said your father
could never have wanted you).
Press the soil around her calves
and into her knees; let it rest there
as a symbol of the years you parted--
(remember calling her and asking
if she would visit; the way her voice
echoed yours but she never came).
Cup handfuls of dirt and splatter them,
her waist disappearing under the weight
of gravity, just like her abandonment--
(remember wondering if there'd ever be
another place called home; the space
of her now inside you).
Let the
Man spotted getting out of his car to tie a Get Well Soon balloon around the front paw of a dead raccoon. Witnesses speculate the man, mid-40s, white, was responsible for the raccoon’s untimely demise earlier that afternoon. Wracked with guilt, unsure of the moral stain left on his tires when he crushed a small mammal in his path, the man returned to the scene of disaster to extend his well wishes and express his remorse through a plastic, rainbow, loud, GET WELL SOON balloon, before taking a picture and re-entering his car. Witnesses say: “Sucks to be the raccoon. But you've got to admit, the balloon is pretty funny.”
In N