The End Is Coming

Wake up. Squint into that grey, 6.30 kind of light. Hit the snooze button once, twice, three times, but never fall back asleep. Chide yourself for this useless laziness. Propel yourself out of bed. The nausea will immediately hit you.

It's day you-lost-track of your misery, and you're in survival mode. Here we go.

Get in the shower. Deliriously squeeze way too much shampoo into your hand. Lather, rinse, don't repeat. Does anyone actually repeat? You don't have any time to do anything with your hair. Grab your shit, hold it together, power walk out the door to your car. Get in the car. Grip the steering wheel. Try to get a grip on that lump in your throat.

Walk into work. Smile and wave. You faker. You hypocrite. Sit at your desk. Don't look at the pictures that decorate your cubicle. Let the florescent light steal your sunshine and trap your little complaints in a box below the floorboards. Forget who you are. Stare at the cold blue screen.

Stare blankly into space on your smoke breaks, your lunch break. Don't think about it, whatever it is. Him, her, someone died, someone left, someone failed you. Or did you fail?

Forget your failures. Machines fail by way of design flaw.

Go home in a daze. Eat your supper in a daze. Watch TV in a daze. Read in a daze. Turn the lights out in a daze. Roll over and cry your little cry to the wall. Walls always listen.

Dream your dreams, your nightmares. Toss and turn. Sweat through the sheets. Your mind has run loose, broken its leash. You see it before you, his face, her face, their failures. Or are they your failures?

Hold tightly your failures. They will make sense, one day.

Wake up. Squint into that grey, 6.30 kind of light. Hit the snooze button once, twice, three times. Wonder when this will be over, when you will be uncrippled, unbroken, unchained.

Look in the mirror. Look yourself in the eyes. Somewhere in there is the strength to get you through this. Somewhere in there is the reason you keep getting out of bed.

Keep moving. The end is coming.

A Good Man

He was a man, just a man, but he was a good man. He paid his taxes, his cars were insured, he was a hard worker, a loving husband, a doting father. He did not smoke, he did not swear, and he attended church every Sunday without fail.

            Yes, he was just a man, but he was a good man.

            It was a beautiful summer day, this man sitting on his porch, holding hands with his wife, soaking in the sun with a lazy smile on his face. His eyes, which had been closed with contentment, suddenly flung open as he heard someone ascending the stairs to his front door. He nudged his wife when he saw the visitor, a cop in uniform, an ominous grey look on his face.

            “Good afternoon,” the intruder said.

            “Good afternoon, officer.”

            “I have some bad news, sir,” said the officer, and the man’s wife covered her mouth.

            They had thought their daughters, ages sixteen and fourteen, were together at a church lock-in the night before. In fact, they were at a party, the kind of party in a big brick house with no parents home. They had both gotten in the car, intoxicated. The car veered off the road, running into a pole, killing them both.

            He was a man, just a man, but he was a good man. He cried day and night as he planned the details for his girls’ funeral, the pink lined caskets, the music they liked. He tried to comfort his wife, his beautiful wife, but she was removed from him by her shield of grief, and would not let him touch her.

            The day after the girls’ memorial service, the good man’s wife put a gun in her mouth and blew herself away.

            He was a man, just a man, but he was a good man. Even with his firm faith, he could not find the ray of hope in the darkness of that valley. He could not get out of bed in the morning. Too many months of withering excuses, and he lost his job. Soon thereafter, his car was repossessed. Then his home went into foreclosure.

            He is a man, just a man, but he is a good man. He sits between two skyscrapers, the lowest of the low, in a grimy flannel shirt and ripped-up jeans, his beard overgrown. At night, he cries to himself, “My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?” and during the day he asks the passerby for change, but you just wave your hand at him and think, He got himself into this situation; he can get himself out of it.