Bequeathed Baby

Winds came hard from the east, carrying my ex to the sands she loved and an urn, a bequeathment from her father, now chipped, his old apartment full of former students.

The water flooded up into a pool, the students playing and spitting, little to say, the phone – the phone again! – half burned in the muddy sand, unable to grip, to move back, even with the kids trying to throw rocks, thinking he might never come back, and then having to go to the bathroom, always that.

He was a baby. He wanted everything for himself and then none of it, vanishing into nothing. And not even that.

Honest About Being Dead

I saw my friend Gord last night. He died some two years ago and looked almost happy in spite of the pain, knowing he wasn’t really there. I told him that I respected him for that, being so honest about being dead and then realized I shouldn’t have said that. I changed the topic to how I was still afraid of the dark and that I didn’t know how to work through my hate. I just wasn’t big enough for that.

And then Gord was gone or was in the hallway getting his coat, and I had to get to Abbotsford for a job interview and was waiting for a bus and then watching a school play, hiding in someone else’s bed, waiting for the food to be delivered, still mad about everything but glad I wasn’t dead.