the one that laughed forever and killed them all doing it

 

 

Time machines... et cetera.

This isn't the beginning of something beautiful. This is the end. A standing ovation. An encore.

Sometimes in the winter, you forget what summer looks likes. There are chalk outlines on the cement where the people inside of them just get up and walk away. The sky leaks light. And some things are glued together shoddily but with very good intentions. I don't think God meant for the human heart to crumble so easily. We were a mass-produced flaw. Good to look at, but shipped with a label that says "Damaged Goods".

Do you wonder what we have instead of wings? We have crowbars and kite strings and multivitamins, and the secret that is kept in the breadbox is that God is a little jealous of our beautiful hair, and our way with words. He must have said, "Yeah, yeah, this is where I'll leave the rest of the gods." Because looking back, God shouldn't have given us such beautiful crowbar wings but He took the car and ran out of gas.

The thing I've noticed about people is that they know a lot about circles but not much at all about straight lines. Try to get from point A to point B; I bet you can't. There is a lot that we can't fix---the stars are exploding, the milk is spilling, Cleopatra is dead---but there's tape for that. If we can't fix it, we sure can write nice poems about it.

You are beautiful like a moth. And when Peter, James, and John come to dinner, they don't even wipe their feet; and if they eat a slice rhubarb pie, I bet you will, too. You hate rhubarb pie. Sometimes the little things are the ones that kill you. Blood vessels, arteries, scrap metal. Eat what you want.

When God was making man he must have just closed his eyes and pointed to the nearest miracle and here I am: an empty spot in heaven. God said, "Hey, where'd everybody go?"

No, I didn't bite the hand that fed me; I licked it clean.

I'm out for blood.

I'm impatient and I didn't even bother leading the horse to the water. I carried him on my back and showed him where the kept the cans of Coca-Cola. Oh yes, you unbendable little beauty, you bracken-watered little fool. You forgot all about how men are beaten out of boys, torn kicking and gnashing their teeth from the beds that they slept in as children; they were always just chapels and steeples and heavy wood doors. They were always religion, the very stomach of it, religion and good to pray for.

You coward. Bloodied from the wars your father taught you to fight in, worshiped by the schoolchildren whose scraped knees you spat upon, "Get up. Get up." You were uncovered like some rare Paleozoic skeleton in the dirt, millions and millions of years too late to say "I forgive you, Mother". You coward.

Who tucks you into bed? Who prays for you?

You have never been older than you are right at this exact second. But also, you're never going to be this young again. That's a lot of responsibility.

You put "Proceed with Caution" signs up on your bedroom walls to remind yourself to stir the soup and look both ways when you're yielding to pedestrians. Your slogan could be "Maybe later". Try to locate Heaven on a map of Ohio, because you'll be damned if you do and damned if you don't; there were never enough tomorrows or crayons in the box, Lucifer you had your fun, and I will never become what you were when you were bright: bright, bitter, and beautiful in your blistering youth. You have been wondering why the stars aligned the way they did because they spell your name and they break your heart; but how broken-hearted could you be, exactly, with your name across the sky in stars. Oh yes, the ones I love most have me by the throat.

This is a public apology... and I accept. I forgive you.

Keep it warm for me in the oven. Write it in pencil. Tell me just how much you wanted to see my skin stretched for miles and miles and miles across deserts that used to be oceans. Because some things don't have endings, sometimes it's very hard to find the last page and sometimes it's very hard to say good-bye.

Thank you, John F. Kennedy for taking the bullet for me.

Who loved you best?

This has been The Devastation Diaries.

(good night)