Nice

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2

You can feel it slipping through your fingers, can’t you? The burden of humanity slowly sucking each moment of ease and comfort from your desperately clenched fists? No, this isn’t some stupid metaphor about how you should never hold on to something hard enough. That metaphor is for quitters.

But you’re not a quitter. You’re a pleasant human being who always puts up a smile when asked “Hey, can you come to the office over the weekend? There’s numbers we need to run, and everybody around here seems to already have a life.” Of course. After all, despite what you may or may not love to do. Or have a passion for in life, your work is what puts the bread and butter on the table.

Besides, at the end of the day, you have family and friends to fall back on, right? “How’s the wife and kids?” Oh. It’s that smile again. Don’t feel sad, marriage is not the fulcrum of your life. You have other people to try and please. There’s the friends who have always been there for you. Perhaps because you’ve always set floored expectations of what qualifies as being there. And also skewed your perception of them fulfilling that criteria. So you somehow made it your life purpose to be there for them when they needed you to. Because you’re a dutiful friend. Don’t you let anyone tell you how you’re ruining any grim chances you might have at actually living a happy life by being there for them. Because that would be wrong. After all, what are friends for? Don’t ever doubt that. No matter what anyone else tells you.

Why? Because you’re nice. You’d hate to hurt anyone through your actions. You’re pleasant to be around and you always have spare change in your pocket to feed the meter. You could even park their car if someone was in an absolute hurry. But only if they’re in an absolute hurry – you have your own ego, after all, you wouldn’t let someone walk all over you like that. Unless they were in an absolute hurry. Then it would be okay. Because you understand. You’ve been there. You know how it feels, and how nobody else in the world understands their pain – you can fix it. You can fix them, if they allowed you to. Some people would call that an obsessive compulsion to fix things, but you know that’s not it, right? You do it out of goodness. Not because you feel that fixing them would somehow fix you. That would be stupid.

You’re a good person, you really are. You’re nice.

To Whom It May Concern

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3

You know who you are. This is for you:

The most devastating object in this world is not violence. It’s not murder or theft or war or even moral corruption. It’s a smile. Because a smile is everything else combined unto one – it IS violence. It IS murder. It IS war. And it IS moral corruption. It can change the winds of conversation. It can compel towards crime. It can change the chemistry of the human body – raising imbalances and flooring inhibitions and sensibilities. It can change the chemistry of the human body.

And while you may think that an object of such power must be impenetrable, it is not. The same murderous, corrupting smile can give away more than words or even the stolen glances of the eye. Its mere texture can give away doubts and hopes and if-dos and if-nots. A slight tremble of the lips, the failing efforts to hold back – it can give away the war.

A smile CAN be war. It can either be victory, or it could be surrender. And it can make both seem trivial.

I Do Not Want You

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No, I do not want you,
Not for the whims of age,
I do not.
I do not want you;
For the fancy of it all.

I want you like a cloud wishes to pour,
To birth shoots in the sand,
Or to tear apart the ocean.
I want you like the sun wants to set,
In the barren sand,
And heather fields alike.

I want you like I want to be wanted.

Walk

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5

You’re always afraid. Of going out by yourself. Of the things you can’t believe. Of going beyond that street, going beyond that bend from where you can still see your house. You’re afraid of walking the street slower than everyone else. Of sitting down at a cafe and ordering a coffee for one.

You’re afraid of being that person in the movie. You’re so afraid of the truth that your lies become your truth. You’re afraid of that look in her eyes that tells you she’s happy. You’re not afraid of being wanted. You’re just scared of not being wanted by the person you do. You’re scared of change, you’re scared of memories, and what they would mean to you. You’re scared you will be forgot.

Rules do not scare you. But the thought of not fitting in with the paradigm scares you to darkness. Darkness scares you.

But light is not something that peeks in in the morning through that crack in your wall and reaches out around your neck and becomes that which you breathe. No. Light does not bend corners around the street. People do.

Get up. Grab yourself up by the collar. Leave your jacket behind. Leave your headphones, leave your shoes. And make that street, walk past that bend. Before autumn. Before the season passes. Walk.

Love and Hate

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7

He both loved her, and hated her. She turned him into someone new. Someone different.

All of a sudden, all of the things he used to be so sure of, he was less sure of. All the simple philosophies of life suddenly seemed a little less simple. A bleach-white cup of black coffee, with a rim of gold bubbles around the edges, was just a cup of coffee. The reflection of sunlight from the building across the street, was just an inconvenience. Lunch, or even a quiet evening without her was filled with just a little less life.

Words, and thoughts, began to seem a little less frequent. He began to doubt – whether he ever had feelings. Or were they just thoughts – the carry-throughs of an available mind on a slow Friday evening? That, in turn, made him unsure of the unfamiliar, wrenching sentiment churning in his gut, on the verge of hurling itself out of his mouth, perhaps as an extra puff of air. Or a smile. Or in the shape of words.