Dualities are all the rage
in here where I supposedly
belong. Do I seal my lips
with super glue or vent via
screams until my voice col
lapses? I have so much to
tell you that I don’t want to.
I have so much I want to tell
you that I dare not. This con
flict has never been a problem
for me – it’s stability. But do I
let that be my excuse? I talk
the ears off anyone who lets me.
Mostly they’re paid professionals
or interviewers. But what if some
one knew me enough to really want
to listen, to hear my story, my num
erous stories, the ones I only hint at,
if at all, but never tell completely. Am
I just too lazy? The world is so unfair
and yet I’ve been so blessed. If it were
going to be so unfair to me, oh how in
retrospect I’d rather it have done so
when I was young. But maybe that’s
some pretty cheap vanity. Deal with
it, I demand of myself. But then, how
to get perspective when I’ve no one
here who knows me well enough to
know that this wasn’t my lot, speak
ing of vanity, speaking of an over-
inflated ego. There’s no we where
I go. That’s the biggest difference
besides the atrocities that are so
much easier for me to see. I
have never been one with any
desire for empathy so deep that
it drives. Whips around these
cliff-laden California curves I
haven’t seen in nearly a decade
now. I’m not helpless. But I
am unable to pretend these
shackles did not bind me by
coincidence, were certainly
not mere accident. Blame a
system or, more appropriately,
its people. No matter, what’ll
it do for me to blame? So I
play this game, flummoxed
by this lack of inertia, this
movement that seems filmed
for me to watch as it transpires,
and in such slow motion that it
is impossible to tell whether the
gradient is an incline or a decline.
Or a recline. Idiots who look at
the downtrodden thinking, even
saying aloud, how lazy they have
to be in order to be in such a sit
uation. Bite your tongue off is
the situation. Know it before
you burn it. Maybe it’s worse to
avoid. Pretend such things, these
people, don’t exist. Do it before
you eschew it! Switch places for
a day. Or bring that thing, that
human being, to work day. What
a holiday that would be. A prison’s
primary purpose is to be built with
no means to escape. Except by
those with keys. They get to
decide. What’s the difference
between you and me? Who’s
got the key? And who’s pacing
the tiny square of concrete try
ing to remember what it must
have been like to be free?
