He was a toadstool of a man; smoking up a storm, great bellows of silent clouds surrounding his thoughts. One of his thoughts was this: People reinvest in a toilet bowl but never the toilet seat. They act as if the seat is just a disposable as a sheet of Kleenex.

Why can’t the seat be built to last.

I tried to answer him but I just kept coughing, my eyes tearing from the cigarette smoke.

This was the sound I make on some mornings, when I realize that things are going well. Inside me, at least. Outside they are a big mess. Roilings of dissent, churning muddy waters that are going into people’s eyes into their lungs.

That’s when I think of vacation. I’ll be out there, on vacation, but inside I will be in paradise.

We can’t be together. The moon and the stars are for someone else. They’re for our respective partners. Remember them? Of course you do. We love them.
We also love each other.
It’s alright. It’s gonna be alright.
We just have not to not pay attention to the other. One of us should move to England. I think it will be you. That interview you had at King’s College seems to have done the trick.
I know Sally would like to move there. She’ll be nearer her family.
It’s the only way, for you and I. Go away.
Please.

The family laid bare their love of animals. Rounding the chicken coop, there was discovered some waylaid egg, somehow booted from the hen house.
Oh look. I’m not sure how long it’s been there.
We can eat it for breakfast.
Won’t that be abortion? A question expected from a kid (if they knew about such things) or even some hypersensitive person.

But from the actual hen? Never.

I shrugged, at a loss for words.

You only know for sure when your pressed against the wall. Any decision that pops into your mind, moves out from your body, onto the other person, place or thing–well, that’s just it.

It came up on me suddenly, like a bolt of lightning that I love being alive. But the action has yet to appear. The bolt came but where is the movement. I can shake and shiver from the joy of living–but how will it move from my limbs and carry forth. A torch? A song? A letter? A phone call?

The group spoke with no distinction or cadence.I leaned in, hoping to hear what they were saying. The spoke with such animation. Drinks were sloshed, penances taken and the talks continued.

I wondered if I was the subject of their misogynist stares. I am a man, I insisted to them, hoping they would believe me. Their stares grew meaner, the words clearer.

“What?” I cupped my ear with one hand, with the other holding my drink.

One of them sprang forth with the news. They believed me. I was a man, in their eyes. The worst kind.

I pretended not to hear them, went over the next crowd at the party, hoping for better news.

Catheter cleaned, urine bag emptied, medication taken. Sponge bath administered.

Oh the joy of having AIDS. Tiny particles doing their assault, quietly, as I lay here dying.. Fresh perspiration sprouting along my forehead. I cannot speak. I am asked to blink instead; the oldest trick in the book.

“Hank, I love you,” someone says at my bedside.

I blink back, hoping they know my resonse.

I love you: the oldest trick in the book.

Aimless floating, is the way of the paper boat, fashioned by the little boy with cowlick and freckles.Who is this boy? I should look away since I have a son of my own.

Somewhere. I wrote him a letter back when you could write lettes. Now he’s in his twenties and though he is on several media platforms I can’t find him. Well, I have found him but he hasn’t accepted any of my requests to join his social world.

I wish he were just a little kid again. I had so much control back then. I could sit there and watch him and the paper boat (my kid loved paper airplanes)

People have their quirks and the gradation of those idiosyncracies can be the difference between sanity and annoyance.

I’ve had my own. And it’s this: the cook in the kitchen. For years I’ve watched you julienne and simmer and saute. Action verbs surround you like an aroma. It was with some regret that I am not allowed in that kitchen, given the status in my household and the dominion I thought I had over it. It is but a shell  of a power.A formality for houseguests, neighbors, the UPS guy. It’s humiliating to have to wait to be served, my hands no longer in any pies. My editcs but caramelized.

This is what happens when you let someone make the hors d’oeuvres. When you let them ladle the smallest of soups.

A pre-war building, did you say? Oh really?
Who gives a shit.