If you said something to me, something true… maybe… sometimes I wonder if I could even hear you. It’s like the world is filtered through everything that’s ever been said, or all the crap I did when I should have been in high school. Maybe through the innocent eyes of a very young me, standing in the kitchen doorway watching my parents fight to be heard, or my brother slugging me in the arm while I did my very best to take it because I wanted his love and friendship. I learned some really fucked up things about the world, and like a famous anthropomorphic egg-man, I am quite sure the pieces of me will never come back together again. So the words I masochistically want to hear are all I come away with, and then we are broken again. Undone.
I remember playing telephone as a kid. Remember telephone? Where we all sit in a circle and I whisper “Johnny is a punk” in your ear… and it’s exciting because I get to touch your hair, brush it back over your ear, smell you a little and then feel my own warm breath against my face as it rushes against your soft ear. You look at me like I’m crazy, and then whisper something into the person’s ear beside you. the message goes around the circle until the person on the other side of me smiles and says “Potty in a funk” and everyone laughs.
When you are telling me you are in pain, sometimes I hear you saying “Help! I am in pain.” On less than perfect days I hear you saying the words which are actually coming out of your mouth. On bad days like today I hear a distortion of the words, and sometimes I retaliate.
If I were to really break open, I wonder if it would be so bad. It would certainly give all the King’s horses and all the King’s men something to do for a while.
Somehow there has to be a little more room in this world for just a little more compassion, and a tight, chocolate smudged fist full of open conversations.
Join me?
