how romantic to cleave yourself out of a life. how utterly selfish and cruel. I cannot rewind or undo or forge forward. but i am suffering, they are suffering. i cannot reach out to her. i can barely reach them. i do not want to be reached. i am failing at this. i am a failure. i have failed you all.

i have built this tremendous thing, it is awe inspiring, it takes up all this room. more importantly, lives depend on it. so many lives wrapped and entwined. i study the foundation. she says to me, you’ll have ruined my life. i take a step back but do not know how to admire it any longer. it presses on me. but i do not know if the fault is with my sight, the time of day i’ve decided to regard it, or the structure as a whole. what i do know is that i can never rebuild such a thing again: it’s taken me far too long.

always in this liminal fucking state yearning for the american dream and an alternative to property ownership, career instability and 401k’s shoved down the back of the throat. i can’t help but stare. i am staring and do not know how to shift my gaze onto some epiphany and resolution to all of this. i never wanted this for myself, for my wife, for my children. how did this happen? how was i convinced? why was i convinced? why have i become unconvinced? where is the lack?
he says to me, why boy, isn’t it obvious? nothing wrong with it or the rest.
you are the lack, you are the despair.

no one knows everything. compartments where we lock things up but cannot forget. cannot forgive. it’s all a stutter. i ghost from room to room. she tells me how her aunts told her to keep an eye on me, to keep me happy. what the fuck do they see. what the fuck do they think i am. brutal monster, i’ve forgotten how to read to my child. device failure. human failure. stain. swath of sweat across the chest, and the stench. this is what i am. not what i’ve become, this is what i’ve always been. i’m only normal in the sun, where the light blinds everyone.

and here, here we were, how has it been? to begin again, out there, in the dusk of fall. sitting on the porch i see the chalk lines my daughter has left: tales of anger and boredom: she is her father’s daughter. such rage for all of four. who am i, who am i, i’ve lost her, i’ve lost him, adrift. i am adrift. i am the rift, i am the absence of all that you were.

it has been miles since I’ve written: miles since I’ve engaged with the process long enough to produce something substantial, perhaps even meaningful.
it feels as if it has been weeks since I’ve seen the sun even though I’ve stared straight into it from behind dust thick blinds. I am blind and wounded and beyond repair.
I tell her in the dark: when we come into money it’ll be easier. I whisper, it’ll be hard at first, but you’ll be better off.
Scrambling in the pale light she asks, what does that mean? What the fuck is that supposed to mean?

He says to me in the dark,
(always in the dark when he is closest to me, ghost hand well placed on my desk, a mouth full of ashes beside my ear, he says,)
I don’t know what’s worse: that it was all in my imagination
or that you still linger in mine.

Yo man how cool is this? I was just trying this shit out and it was the fucking bomb.

you cannot undo it. you cannot wipe the blemishes away from the scars: you are always fucking up. you are always the fuck up. it’s like you can’t help yourself, always putting yourself right at your most weakest, always proving yourself to be weak, always proving how little worth you truly have. and it goes on like this, sticky sweat, stifling heat and a shallow breath that keeps you going: despite the sag, despite the fact you know exactly what you should do.

the idea is, to build the bankroll and unfortunately you’re going to have to do it slowly, dollar-table by dollar-table. you have no choice because you were reckless and impatient.
now sit with the clowns and bear with the show.