Sour Grapes.

Up visiting from a charmless winter,
She gives a sound to me.
“Here,” she says. “Take it. It’s yours.”
It carries no weight,
And it does not move me.
It is a dull gray murmur
That makes me realize even more:

I should never have come here.

Where are your clothes?
She asks me,
calling me different names
All morning.

Why did you come here?
An implication
I am currently familiar with.
Sidled with a sad indifference and
A series of regrettable decisions that
Neither one of us were prepared to make
As children.

Why are you so quiet?
In the car
Driving home,
And it lingers there,
But only for a second.

We had to shout last night.
Remember?
We were dancing and then we kissed
In your sisters room
And -

Why are you so quiet?

Because.

I am looking straight ahead.
I am trying to see through
These low clouds
To better make sense
Of what it means
To get older
Everyday.

And still . . .

Something a lot of people don't know about Jimmy Carter is that he used to eat frogs. From the time he was 13 to when he was 19, he used to eat them as practice - should he ever get lost in some Georgia marsh and have nothing to eat. He cooked them over fires mostly, tried a few boiled, and once, when he was 17, he braved one raw. Just bit right into it's skull and gagged reflexively as soon as he heard that little "crunch" and "squish." At 20, Jimmy Carter ("Crazy Jimbo" to his friends) soon realized that he would never possess the ineptitude that would allow for him to become lost in a Georgia marsh.

This story is entirely made up.

I sometimes think of God this way: a made up story about a man eating frogs in a Georgia marsh.

I can't put a band-aid where it needs to go.