#68 Good Bones
In conversation with Maggie
Life is short, though I keep this from my children.
Life is shit, says my therapist, but you are also here to be happy.
Life is short, and I’ve shortened mine
in a thousand delicious, ill-advised ways,
a thousand deliciously ill-advised ways
I’ll keep from my children.
Life is shit, I missed the train, and I’ve been gracious as much as I’ve been ungrateful in a thousand little ways, a thousand and one ways I keep from the world.
The world is at least
fifty percent terrible, and that’s a conservative
estimate, though I keep this from my children.
And it continues spinning, incessant! The days are relentless, aren’t they. I still believe the world is more good than not, it is the only explanation we’ve evaded human extinction. Or maybe we are incurably narcissistic, fighting by the skin of our teeth to survive, like cockroaches.
For every bird there is a stone thrown at a bird.
For every loved child, a child broken, bagged,
sunk in a lake.
For every laugh a child makes a mother screams watching her child die. For every loved thing, a bird broken, bagged, a horrible thing sinks.
Life is short and the world
is at least half terrible, and for every kind
stranger, there is one who would break you,
though I keep this from my children.
Life is shit and the world is too big to make up my mind about its goodness yet, I am 29 and still naïve, still hoping, and for every kind person, there is one who might break you, though I silence those voices when I walk alone at night.
I am trying
to sell them the world.
I am trying to buy the world, still, even with the exorbitant prices, a bag of chips chronically half-empty. I am an optimist. A romantic.
Any decent realtor,
walking you through a real shithole, chirps on
about good bones: This place could be beautiful,
right? You could make this place beautiful.
Anyone with a bit more to fight for, walking you through the world, drones on about the light in its darkest of places. This place could be beautiful, right? We could make this place beautiful.