12.4.17

Beyond everything,
what depressed me
was her penchant for loneliness.
There it was, her life’s schedule.
Playing on the back of my eyelids.
The same routine
repetitive and redundant and
executed with an extreme scrutiny
that expected a return on investment
in the form of a soulmate, one day
…no, no…
I’m not saying this right.
Here:
Imagine her capital H Hope was a balloon.
A great big red balloon with a long string,
and she was clinging to the end of this string,
anticipating the balloon
would carry her to safety,
not understanding,
not even a bit,
that the balloon was always rising,
rising,
up
and
up, away
from solid ground and up
into the heavens, up
beyond the clouds
and the atmosphere, up
into the black deadness of the outer world,
where she would freeze and suffocate and
die miserably while staring at
the entirety of Earth
wondering how she’d
somehow gotten separated,
what had she done?

Written at 10:15 at night, in my office, in Agoura Hills CA.