summer stock

 The resolutions don’t arrive, the explanations never get made, the bills are never settled. We either got it, or it goes on back order. We either make it, or it moves along to another life. The math depends on who you are, privileged or brilliant maybe you make it work, the rest of us just repeat a couple of operations, over and over until it finishes us. We stick to the script, we use what’s in stock, we try to be visible in the impossibly busy world. Some of us fill in when there’s a blank space and no one good is available. Some of us are such poor matches for the world, that we just get scribbled on some before we’re tossed away. You get put back on the shelf enough, you know where you’re staying.

I don’t learn. I assume actions are reproducible, I assume the instruments are sound, but I am not capable of making informed assumptions. I keep on the wrong track even after a few collisions. I just assume crashes are part of the process, and keep jonesing for the process even once it has no use for me. I walk around the empty circle handing out my ducks and geese without a duck to pat or a goose to pursue. The ghosts are starting to ask about me behind my back, getting all their gossip lined up good. I keep up the rituals long after the gods they serve are gone.

By the time I show up either the bodies are buried or the damage is done. By the time I’ve worked my way around the Bay I’ve burned every bridge there is. I speak my piece and everyone else has moved onto a different show and season. And because the words are my sickness and my sentence, I always think that I’ll find the right ones. Because they find me by my words, I mistake how much they matter. So I go speaking out of turn, break down the church door during service, only to leave my sorry wrong room and baleful stares and whispered curses. Always so wrong and so far off script that there’s no back to go to. There’s no words anyone wants from me, and here I am handing them out by the bushel. Nothing to say, and I’ve already said it again.