Epistle. To: Wolstonecraft

Thanks. Despite what you warn me about about -  the cumbersome shell of the heart - what more can I do? I let fantasies of liberation get to me and the more I want the more there is to want till it becomes a kind of game. The little voice in the back of my head says be content with the way things are. The weird voice in the back of my head says what happens when the clock starts winding and then you lose out? I joke with the nurse about moving in together. She's here so often we could be a unit. But she doesn't see it that way other than me mentioning it and she thinking it a joke. But we're already kind of dating I said to her. Dating she said? What dating? Well we've gone to the movies I said and we've gone out to stores to buy things. And that's your definition of dating she said? No I said it's not like a definition. What then she said? More like a distraction I said. I like the look in your eyes, the way it can suddenly make me forget what day it is. She trained those queen sized lids on me and said that's nice but I'm not an escape plan. And I said but I don't want to come up empty. Who wants to settle for only the concept? Things should just materialize. That would be cool she said. Like a perpetuating mystery box don't you think I said? So she said, adjusting the bleach solution in the syringe as she prepared to change a bandage, let's suppose you were hungry and wanted a meal. Am I the hot dog? Or am I the grill?  Maybe dating is the wrong way to put it I said. So what is it she said? I thought about it. Hot dogs are about the easiest things to cook she said. She was right. Hot dogs were fucking simple. I then had a flash - as I got a needle full of that bleach solution straight into an open gash in my sternum - die bacteria die! - that not only are we just made from parts and leftovers that some process in life deemed us to be but there's also a world where you try and balance loneliness and companionship as though they were the the twin motors of the daily forage outward and back. If I were displaced in a song that would be a comfort. But I am not. I can't believe it fully or at least I fool myself into thinking that way but, really, you do have to ask, what purpose did dying serve? Time to begin again? And so as what? Another repository for aches and pains? A time sink that gathers information over the years and as a consequence gives out advice? And what's the answer to dating someone? How do you do that or not and come away so everyone feels clean? And so I continued and said to the nurse while it may seem at these unfortunate times that life as we know it is an action calamity squeezed between something like an endurance of a faith in breathing and a grudge match to simply and purposely hold on wouldn't you like to imagine we could be the stopper in the excess that totally wears us down? The nurse looked at me and packed some freshly opened gauze into the hole but didn't say anything. Why keep it dull I said? But she kept looking at me. She was like someone who went to a party in a good mood and would never allow all those otherwise bridges of language - like drunks yelling over the music -  or the fabled sweet nothings of sex come ons in her ears - to tie herself up in the head contrary-wise. She was able to look into the future about herself. And be clear. She was like cicadas calling out beneath a hot summer air that one day the whole air changes when you hear it but also you understand it's been that way for a very long time. And that was scary in the sense because you could count on it. It was also I'm afraid to admit way alluring. I'm trying to develop desirable points of view. If I have another life to live and if death has graced me that way then I want in. But I don't know if it's too late. And so I said I walked over to the park this afternoon. No she said you didn't. Her expression changed and she shook her big sad eyes across my face. No I said sensing her disappointment it wasn't like that at all. I need to get out I said. I found no trouble. I did nothing wrong. Try and see this I said. Paddle boards like the latest fad were out on the lake in clumsy happy numbers all nervous and almost experimental and looking stupid for lack of skills with people falling off them and getting back on board beneath a sterling light hitting the water. Soccer balls skimmed across the grass like they do each weekend in a pick up game and people on the sidelines shouted and had fried chicken and clandestine cold beer. Young bodies in bathing suits that fit them like stars exploding in desperate time were stretched out on the rocks soaking up the cancer and vitamin D in the sun. Mindless hedonistic and turned on from old reptile dreams. And I guess being in the surroundings indicates an involvement whether it's here or nothing else. I had all the pills I needed to elevate the mood and yes I did grab a beer from a chummy soccer fan. And somewhere between the soccer game played back and forth on the ground and the water played into the coves on small hot winds I yelled hey check it out I'm back from back from the dead! What more was there to want? A fucking tax credit for being alive? I see it the nurse said. The seven o'clock bells rang out upon the evening. Some rain last night but the garden needed it. The lilies have gone away for the year and just that alone to think about, the way you might lose a quality, marks a calender as subjective and makes you wonder where the damage is. But the brown eyes have muscle now in the space cleared by the lilies. It's a plan like that. All I did was plant it in motion and waited to see what happened. Do you like bonfire parties the nurse asked?