Chad.

Tell me about Chad.

Chad ...


Sucked. Drove me mad. Hated and loved him. Wronged him, worshiped him, lost myself at his threshold, wanted his babies, feared him. What elements are missing when you’re in love? It demands every emotion in harm’s way, and all your needles and pins. He was dumb and brilliant, a sensitive lover and a self-absorbed lout, who rated me as an object we discussed (as if I wasn’t there) but I forgive him taking everything I had, and leaving me here. Don’t I? Perhaps not. It’s conclusive, and open ended, not ordered, open and closed ... the door is banging, hands get severed in it. I’m attempting to restrain the tears she’s attempting to restrict access to, and we’re both failing. Ah, the morbid bliss of having been smashed to pieces ... like a wine perishing right before you, it’s so vintage, and precious.

Our bodies are reliquaries of all the edifying and ecstatic things we’ve encountered; the sun set over the mountains the moon mirrored in departure, and for one eternal minute, the two resided within my person, perched on alternate ridges of experience. Cells compete to assimilate this; neurons stretch their potent junctions; the desert hums for the eternal scythes reap while dawn emerges, moon hissing into cool evenings elsewhere. Hello? This is our mantra.


She drives a hundred and fifty miles a day, for no particular reason ... she loves to drive, so points’ distance weigh inversely to most people’s reckoning. I find it amusing she’s such a vehement recycler. She’s forty three and wants two more kids, although the four she has are college age, and making her sell her house. Do you know how much out-of-state tuition is?! Forty grand. Jesus Christ. Are you mad? I countered. Hell bent of eating dog food from a cardboard mansion on a violently-busy street? Sent to local college myself, the extravagance of making your single mom sell the inherited family house, seemed incredible. But what the hell. Why not? It’s a minor act of abasement compared quite forlornly to rasing four fanatically-rowdy kids ... or at least, that’s how I perceive it. Some part of me said, what a nightmare, and another was sad for the thought I’d missed such adventure. She, on the other hand, wanted to use what she’d learned, and perfect her process, now the glaring mistakes were behind her. Makes sense I guess... imagine only bettering one novel, until it was throughly dead. No starting afresh, aloof from the miserable drivel that last moped into; you must flog the intractable, abstruse passages to dearness, and innocent doe eyes again. I sadistically mentioned : Perhaps it’s the only thing you know how to do, to elicit a feeling of self worth. It’s a proven pattern the world is removing from your repertoire, just as drinking and driving to get home is crucially hampered by DUIs. The kids slide off the edge of the universe to leave you hand and foot tied to the branch you grabbed, attempting to keep them there, and now what? Another round? A new manic activity? Sell the house you painstakingly renovated over twenty years, just as it reaches completion?