Sometimes I Feel...

A long way from drafty bedroom, queen-sized Malm; and the comforting warmth of soft flannel-sheeted sleep; a long way from home.

Like nothing happened, I get up most days and go about a routine left over from before. It seems mundane now. Maybe it always was.

Unmotivated, I begin tasks to abandon midway. Soft butter and room temperature eggs rest on my kitchen table, never to be chocolate chip cookies. Acknowledgements unwritten allow genuine appreciation to go unexpressed.

Like a three-year old, lost, alone, bottom lip quivering, brow furrowed, eyes filling, vision blurring, sobbing uncontrollably, never getting around to telling what’s wrong.

Surely I should explain, at least to fellow transit passengers, inching closer to windows, uncomfortable with watching a river flow down the face of a grown man. Saying it will only make me feel worse and cry harder.

I’m almost gone; a watermark on a page.

Like a sentence half written, predicate without subject, I run on, but long for punctuation.

Undefined... destinationless.

She’s still here – at home in the kitchen, chopping vegetables or putting peppercorn in the collard greens; smoldering cigarette in a nearby ashtray; Maze, featuring Frankie Beverly or The Whispers setting a rhythm. Only distance I can cover in the space of two hours-fifteen minutes separates us. I’m willing to believe, but reality won’t be altered.

I had a daydream, snoring softly, chin resting on chest. The pretty lady in the cream suit and the “I Love Jesus” scarf was a familiar stranger. Lips calmly brushed a cool forehead; hands gently covered a still face in white satin… swiftly closed a pretty white box, adorned with angels. Whose lips? Whose hands? Who was that lady?

This lucid dream should cause considerable distress, but plays like a Lifetime movie, adapted from paperback or chitlin-circuit stage play turned feature film. Flat characters, predictable plot, familiar setting and colloquial dialogue require minimal investment and even less thought. Same script, different cast.

I want to laugh at the funny parts, shake my head in dismay at the writing, revise the plot or at least my part so I don’t wander aimlessly through scenes sans purpose or motivation, but with enough lines to still be called a lead player.

Like a damp shirt, billowing on backyard clothesline at the mercy of March wind, I hang precariously by one pin, waiting for the gust that sends me wafting through air to land on hard, dusty ground.

Like a Motherless Child.