My Heart's Just Not In It

September makes a good case for reincarnation—tired-but-crisp panoramic, silent-but-rustling demeanor. I feel old tracing the contours of new objects. This is supposed to be makeout weather, but it's making me wither.

For the purposes of this blog, I'm on extended book leave. You might see me in a coffee shop, slouching, backspacing, contrabanding my banishment. I haven't been stringing sentences to my liking. Memories are in danger of being corroded by revisionists. Five weeks ago, my mom apologized for letting my brother abuse me as a child. I can't be so sure that he did.

Simply: I'm getting to a point where I will have known my brother dead as long as he was alive. I'm nearing a limit of minor authority and major storytelling; I'll turn the option to audience to determine relevancy. When People in Bars ask how many siblings, I might just cut him from the list. It will pain me, in the beginning.

Superficially: this is the third straight week my morning commute has involved fantasies of hurling myself before an oncoming train or being carried away by red balloons or being kidnapped by a schemer who mistakes my family for having savings. Something is off. I'm her anxious kid, and sometimes her grisly one, but never more than that. Never requiring disinfectant, reprimand, tourniquet. She’s overheard me eulogize, “Life is beautiful, even when it isn’t.”

It seems as if I want to jettison baggage, but I keep boarding passengers. Zealots with charisma—always unemployed—accusing me of sacrificing dreams to day jobs while accepting my handouts. Rasputins who drink my beer, make my clothes smell like cigarettes, eat ribeye steaks in my bed. Amazed at how easily I bruise. This is where I could use, at least, the disinfectant and the reprimand.

But tourniquet, I turn to quit. I wither in this weather, when I should know better. We all know better. I could afford to sit up straight.