I’m Sick But I’m Pretty

We try and we try and we sink and we swim and yet in the end no one’s ever good enough so we pick a thousand petty fights we know nobody can win but at least it keeps our weary hearts occupied for a while. We want the dance but were never taught the moves so we make it all up as we go along hoping one day everything will fall into place without our having to know the difference between love and pain, sunshine and agony. People are difficult but mostly it’s because they think that they aren’t that they grate on your nerves. Attempting to lessen the ache of my hangover by drinking more wine, I don’t feel much of anything as the sky shines bluer than a razor sharp ocean cuts across the icy winter horizon line. Joining in step with me, you and I walk the same trail through the same park we like to wander through on Sunday afternoons. Sporty people and their dogs and ice cream vendors and the little punk kids daring each other to jump farther and farther out on the rocks that jut into the rushing water as it carves its way past the NO SWIMMING sign and snakes through the side of a steep hill. We talk about things that don’t matter because it’s always the beginning of the end no matter which way you look at it, foolishness is the new black and death the only predictable constant. We laugh at the ones who don’t know to laugh while they can, laugh in the face of all of it as the forests burn and the lovers cry and the poets dream and the face staring back at you in the mirror at night is locked in a scream. The world is a strange place, too big and too small and yet, with my hand in yours, for this moment at least, it feels like a perfect fit.