spurn

If there was a gift, I never received it. If I had one wish it wouldn’t be this. Slumped over strings of meaningless words, dumb songs plugged into my ears. Clock and calendar and no relief in sight. Days on end with no meaningful respite. The stories come to me, of loves and deeds and children and lives entangled in plans and prospects. The tales I hear of the world I barely knew, even before the well ran dry. I hold onto hopes that will never touch me, root for dreamers that couldn’t give two shits about my chosen course. The sort of mistakes that sound good on paper. Followed hearts and honored debts, taking hits and caring for kin. The night has no concern for bright ideals and good intentions. Even less for the bitter ends earned by empirical losers like me. It passes how it passes, and leaves the chatter to those that think it matters.

In a way it is like a wish: if you say it out loud, it might not come true. Instead I gnaw away at the scenery, I tromp back and forth across the boards. I play to the cheap seats of my vast imaginings, break the fourth wall after kicking the shit out of walls one through three. I revile the days and dread the nights, the show going on and on. You may never know your value, but you know what they will pay. Worth is unlikely to show up save in love and filled seats. Sweating under the lights in an empty theater, you give your all. Whether it mattered is up to the notices and the trades.

Anytime along the way it could have changed course. One of a dozen not sos switching sides, the dice roll hitting that save, a word or two when words still mattered. Maybe a day will come where I’m different enough to say okay, I can live with this.  But change is slow and I am dull and steady as it goes. I’ve lived too long in the stranger’s skin, so long that friends have fled, and my family treats me like the abomination it seems I’ve always been. The nights are full of the scoffs and sneers of long gone loves and pretenders to my heart, all the words crumpled and full of second meanings. The aches of old wounds, the rewards for notions of duty and service where everyone is waiting to get over on you, the unseen ladders that everyone seems to climb. The day comes, and the sunshine isn’t waiting for permission. The light only a blessing if you can receive it. I spurn the charity.