You Know It

You know it's good when it seems to just get started at the end You know it's good when you talk big and small throw statements about your reason and resolve like loose change into tins and jars, or fountains You know it's good when you download those apps and light matches that just... disintegrate in your burnt palm—and your plans with this one or that dissolve... But then some don't, and you think, now, finally, that you'll finally get away from it all—one night at a time, right?-but now you're taking off your clothes, putting on your costumes to perform like you've done a thousand times before, but now you're feeling sick, and you throw that feeling toward rational dogs like a bone, but they spit it back out and laugh with the entire audience of your closet's skeletons i'm your best attire—half wearing shirts more hers than yours—so you turn out the lights and close your eyes, but you feel the burning spotlight, and nothing could blind you to what you'd give anything not to know: that she's still sitting iim your front row, and you try to get lost in the act and the show, but the lines are stumbling inside of you, trying to get out, but the doors are lacked like they were when you said too little, and they are now when it's too late, and somehow you finish the show and play on with your artifice, your bow and wave, but now she's gone, the only one who could disarm that feeling of wanting to explode. You lay in the dark blue glow of your phone, of those pictures on the other side of the glass, and wonder if she's right there with you in the dark looking, too, and in awkward fits and starts the image starts to blur, but not nearly enough to make you blind to what you've lost on the chopping block—you man up and decide it's enough. You slap the cheek of the untempered thing in your chest, that stupid boy with his stupid face and hi's stupid voice and yell at him to grow the fuck up, that it's time for work, that he "s been through this a thousand times, and as the sun comes up you feel his resignation, you sigh, and hit the road, eyes fixed forward, knowing he's sitting there, dejected, in the back, and you think about things that matter, meetings, performance, setting an example for the other kids with steel in their eyes and hunger in their hearts to do it Just like you, but then a song comes on—you know the one—and now you're grippin the wheel for dear life, waiting for the pangs to pass, swatting behind you at thi's God damned kid who just won't stop—"You know better just fucking let it go!" But he won't. He's dogged and just keeps holding on, and you try to level with him, tell him he was wronged and has a right to do what's right for him, for you, tell him that it's been months now and that sooner or later, if not already, she's bound to move on and you don't want to see him go down a road that goes nowhere, waste time that he deserves, that you both deserve—but all the while he's shouting back about your just desserts, about how you failed, you heartless bastard you'll be alone forever, what the fuck do you want? Why can't you understand what's right in front of you when it's right in front of you? What about all of those dinners where you got all dressed up and made fun of the waiter's Isp? What about those dinners that were reheated and meant even more? How could you betray that day, all those days, where you were forced to play the getaway driver while she risked her hide for some mangoes in a stranger's yard? And now he's the one hitting you, not in the face, but pounding his sharp fists upon your chest, trying to make you break, make you dial her number—diall home but you refuse to answer him because...nobody's home.... You know it's good, don't you.....yeah...you're loving it now. Now that you're stuck inside of the house, now that you're the thing that haunted the corner of your eye back then when you were still alive, back when we still had drink to share and drank from the same cup, but now you know it's good and it's all going up: the embers flying out of your hand, every burning word from every burning page—one day at a time—each memory taking flight into the dusk-stained sky until they're all finally gone. You know how good it is, but all good things come to an end..... Or they begin again..