Hold Onto Me

He lights my cigarette as we duck underneath an overhang on the front patio, as the rain overflows the gutters along the roof line and slams into the concrete in torrents. It’s a Friday night and the summer sun has been oppressive all day. The rush of the rain feels heavenly, the now cooling earth smells of the faint sweetness of musty dissipating heat. As I take the first drag and let the smoke fill my tender lungs, I’m speaking obsessively about the ways in which the world will end. How it’s already been stripped of so much of its dignity that whatever tragedies happen almost feel well deserved. Why are we are so good at destroying ourselves. Each other. We stand by. It’s not the things we say it’s the things we don’t say. Out loud. It’s what we swallow hoping it will stay deep down inside where it can never hurt anyone but ourselves, as if we were gods, saviors. Humans once or twice removed. We watch the cars driving by slowly on the street next to the house, the glow of their headlights reflecting jagged lines into the wet darkness. Searching. You agree with all the things I say but you don’t see the point in my saying them. I can’t help it, these thoughts have no where else to go. I need to get them out of me. I guess I’m just trying to reach my hands out into the blackness of a terrible nightmare and fumble for something to grab onto, something to stop my head from spinning in this deathly spiral of dread. Something to steady me and make me feel like I’m not alone and even if it’s not all just a bad dream, it’ll be okay. We will be okay. If you are lost, you don’t have to be able to see all the way home. You just have to be able to see a few feet in front of you, one step at a time, and you’ll get there.