killjoy
i try talking writing
with my part-time clerk
mostly because she overheard me
tell my other co-worker
that life has been miserable now
for six months
which is bullshit
i mean she didn’t overhear me
i said it out loud for her and everyone else to hear
maybe it’s not true
i really don’t know anymore
the way life is now
it has to be an aberration
and not the new normal
i don’t want this kid
thinking that i’m some kind of head case
another old man gone off the deep end
left to get old and rot in his lot in life
if she even considers me at all
she’s got a lot on her plate
just like we all do all the time
talking about writing is hard enough
sometimes it’s like talking about
another kind of cancer
and when my co-worker comes out
of the office and says to me
you know, you’re nothing but a killjoy
i try to take it in stride
because five minutes ago
some kid told me that i saved her life
just by renewing a book
i think it’s all relative to the person
exactly who you are to them at any moment
you can never really win
but still the comment cuts me pretty deep
to the core of what i’ve been feeling for so long now
i cut the literary talk with the young part-timer
when she says she prefers the editing over the craft
i disagree
because nothing in this world
beats that first thought
it’s the lingering over anything that’ll get you
but in the end opinions don’t matter much
over your own sense of truth
instead i think everything that’s happening to her is brand
new
while everything that has happened to me
feels like a rerun or a dream
a remembrance of things past
like some perfect killjoy
i ask her if she’d like to go on her way home
her eyes light up and she nods
because we all really want to go home in the end
she touches her stomach
and says, i’m soooooooooooo hungry
and i think to say, you know
i used to feel a certain kind of hunger
at your age too
but i just walk away
lock a few doors
shut off a long row of lights.
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