tern
I used to hate myself in my writing in a manner I've somehow lost, a self-deprecation that bordered on obnoxious and regularly crossed that frontier in search of illegal labor called sadism. Yet I've taken lately to criticism of others in a way unlike that former self, whose heart once bled roughshod over the imagined recollection of a croquet game played by step-sisters and half-sisters, emceed by my old man, everyone dressed in white. You can recognize the throes of this fantasy if you pass me on the way to work, driving a little too slow for those with jobs to do; I begin to mouth an apology for some crime I never committed, but then the part of me that controls keeping my food down intervenes.
And so I've been better, and surer, and aware of some previously unrecognized talent, and that distresses me, because self-esteem has always eaten holes in my psyche before, like so many renegade prions. But I'm not quite ready to return to those depths, the laughter of late far too effective a veneer, good GOD IT KEEPS OUT THE COLD. The best laughter at others' expense, except I've a history of jumping to the defense of offended parties, unless those offenders are friends of mine a-betting. Not a double-standard, I tell myself, a GOLD STANDARD.
Razor-cut lines of laughter, HO HO, a little numbing of recent dreams. Funny lines, like this I still don't understand, “Have we developed a material immune from heat? I would think we could land it on the sun, a prism with our flag. So that all the world would have to be reminded of our light,” followed by a wish. One wish, but once that wish expires I must dive headfirst into Satan's koi pond, to sink to depths of God knows how deep, never to reemerge. The dream always ends with me waking, the sensation of drowning in warm sand. I guess I know how my subconscious decides.
I remember that feeling where you don't know whether to grasp with all your might and take control, or fall into yourself and surrender, let your face be smothered in kisses until you're so hot that force is finally the only option, and light filters through clouds, through skyscrapers and finally through curtains to find you even in these depths of only God knows how deep.