lead my skeptic sight.

I stood on the porch at 11:58.

That night
I had battled giants
scaled immense heights
watched my victories crumble into defeats
fought for loves I did not know
and suffered for causes I did not understand.

That year
was kinda the same.

Like the wanderer
stopping at his shrine
to offer prayer and rest weary limbs
I walked outside
and looked out over the city
that I had loved so dearly
and wished so fiercely would love me back.

I saw the lights in the valley
and the colors in the sky.
I heard the words and chords in my ears
and felt December's tears sting my cheeks
with January's chill

And I thought
as I turned the volume up



yeah.

maybe this year will be better than the last.

this weekend I watched a show
about people who get what they want.

in order to get what they want
they have to perform a task
and it might be really hard
or evil

or it might just seem that way
to the person who has to do it.

and they might change wants halfway through
or the want might start coming true
as the task is performed.

but the one thing they all do
is want something.


I don't know what I want.

But I keep performing anyway.

Dear Everything-I-Am-Marginally-Good-At:

Someday you and I are going to have a long talk about why you don't pay very much money, and why all your jobs are too far away, and why you won't give me any of them.

Regards,

Shums

I never go to weddings.

I'm not, like, morally opposed to them or anything. I think they're a pretty big deal. I just...never go.

I guess I do when it's family. My cousin got married a few weeks ago, and I went then. But I left as soon as I could, grateful to have the excuse of a work shift on a Saturday night half an hour's drive away. That one's easier to understand, though. I don't need a hundred questions from distant relations about the weight I've put on and the bylines they never see in print (because evidently the Internet doesn't work in Arizona) and, most of all, why I haven't had one of "these" yet.

But I don't go to non-family weddings, either. Plenty of men in their late twenties see reception attendance as a chore, but I honestly don't think I'm one of them. You get to wear a suit, for one thing. You get to see pretty girls in dresses, for another. There's cake, and there's dancing, and if the happy couple have any taste at all there's a live band playing jazz, which is the only thing you should dance to in a suit anyway.

Part of it is my schedule; I know I'm simply not available most nights (and, consequently, sleeping most mornings), so I don't bother asking when the blessed event is. Part of it is that, these days, I don't have many friends about whose nuptials I would give a crap. (The ones I did care about have long since passed, along with our friendships.) And yes, one cannot rule out a healthy dose of envy, a dislike of the reminder that they know something I never have, and that the money line isn't exactly trending in my favor.

You want to know the real reason?

I want to meet her there.
I want to catch her looking at me across a crowded chapel or ballroom or pavilion.
I want to walk over to her, and ask her name, and ask her to dance.
I want to hear "My One and Only Love" emerge from a saxophone, sweet and breath-filled, as I take her hand.
I want my feet to be light, and her eyes to shine, and the world to slow, to shimmer, a crystalline memory, imperishable, coruscating, lustrous, clear.

I want that more than I can say.

And that's why I don't go.

I left home in a rainstorm

everything's a memory.