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

I could sit around and keep trying to make sense of Ulysses

Or I could just learn everything I ever wanted to know from Bill Watterson.

Informally, adiue.

You were suddenmotion
Stopped. a still-gliding
Realism suspended, looking
Down and smiling. My own tongue's
Tentative steps across a tightrope, looking
Down,
Overly aware of infinity,
and tornadoes,
Of Allocution(s)
-pilingontopofoneanother-
Accidentally tripping hopelessly
over and over and over again,
Covered in salt and spit,
losing speed, but flooding,
spilling all over the world and asking:
What if you were supposed to be a second language?
"Je vous aime, aussi," You said,
And the world evaporated
into brilliant and small
Forgettable recollections;
always spinning,
always laughing,
Always.

And still–
You never lost your balance.

I lost my balance.
I fell.
I looked back and watched
As you got smaller and smaller
Until I couldn't even recognize you anymore.

You took a more convincing fall off that rope
(But don't think
I didn't see your legs shaking before.
Don't think I didn't see you
Lose your balance),

And while now,
Years later, you are trying again to walk across that string, I would very much like to close my eyes and forget
that I was
ever in a position
to look down at the world
and smile.

Why

I just tried to write a poem.
Fuck poems.

Significance

The sun exploded. It exploded with no hesitation. There was no forethought to it, certainly no afterthought, and absolutely no regard whatsoever for anything else in the solar system. There was a "Geeze, is it hot enough for ya?" shouted somewhere in the middle of a city, by a man of no significance, to no one in particular, and then the earth turned black like a marshmallow fallen into a campfire.

That morning, in a kitchen, just before being turned to cinders, Kelly Henderson held a frying pan under a stream of warm water in her sink to clean off the egg residue leftover from her breakfast. More than anything, Kelly wanted to learn how to salsa dance. She wanted to know what it felt like to move suggestively in public, to lead with her hips, to capture the attention of a room full of strangers. There was a flash and Kelly fried faster than her eggs.

Salsa dancing now exists nowhere in the universe because the sun exploded.

Elsewhere that day, Simon Sherman, a man who enjoyed the fact he had two first names, whistled along the sidewalk while he walked to get his morning coffee. In the midst of his stroll, he recited the only French phrase he knew to himself in his head. Je vous pense tout le temps, he thought, over and over, hopeful that he might catch a certain young lady's attention that day. There was a distinct sound, a pop, the same kind of noise a small bubble blown out of gum makes when it expands to quickly, a precipitous explosion of heat, and the girl (Eileen Anderson was her name) was no longer around (nor was anybody else for that matter) to find out how much he thought about her.

Because the sun exploded, French currently exists in only two other places in the universe.

A young girl named Lizzie woke up that morning with the vague notion that it was going to be an odd day. Having lost her grandmother to lung cancer earlier that month, Lizzie had formulated a shaky comprehension of the concept of death, though it was full of holes and abstractions. Before her Grandmother passed, she had pulled Lizzie tightly into her arms, squeezed her with what little strength she had left and whispered, "I'll miss you, my Lizzie. But don't be sad. I've been so happy with my life."

Lizzie was under the impression that as long as you were happy, death was really nothing to worry about.

Walking into the kitchen, Lizzie discovered that her Father had woken up early to make her her favorite breakfast: French Toast. The little girl smiled and laughed and whirled and clapped her hands, and then there was a flash and then there was nothing.

It really wasn't anything to worry about.

I'm going to go crazy if I don't get some sleep soon.

Years ago (pause to think of a substantial memory), when I was (young, naive, optimistic?) more fun to be around, I had this idea that things had a way of working themselves out. If this were true, (pause to think of example) you could dismantle a wristwatch, throw all of the pieces into the air, and, when it landed, expect it to reassemble perfectly to form a fully functional working timepiece. Laying awake in bed, at this junction in my life, I still can't help but ask myself: "Where am I?"

Every time Gary showered he felt guilty. How could he not, with so many people dropping dead all over the world? The warm water that fired onto his face and cascaded from his chin down to his neck, shoulders, and legs, no longer brought relief to Gary, or a sense of cleanliness. No, now whenever Gary showered all he thought about were people in third world countries who had no clean water to drink. And then there was Gary, going and making it dirty.

But was he really all that dirty to begin with?

Gary decided he would shower less frequently.

And so it was that Gary decided to only shower every other day. This worked for a while, but soon Gary was in the habit of only showering once weekly.

But this was not enough for Gary, while simultaneously being too much. He decided to modify the way he showered as a whole. Instead of one constant stream of water, Gary would turn the faucet on only when necessary, so as to not waste any more water than he needed to. Gary would turn on the shower to wet his hair, but then would turn it off to apply his shampoo, turning it on again when it was time to rinse. Conditioner and body wash were also administered this way.

This rinse cycle was successful for Gary until the winter came, when the intermittent breaks between hot water eventually led to his catching pneumonia.

Gary died.

But before he did, right before he did, mere moments, mere seconds before his neck went limp and his tongue fell loosely out of his mouth like a sock puppet on the stump of an amputee, he turned to his few remaining friends (The ones who could look past how horribly Gary smelled) and whispered, "At least now there will be more to go around." Then, promptly, he died. One of Gary's friends turned to the other and said, "Just like Gary. Always considerate of everyone else's time."

Gary wasn't buried properly and his dead body eventually contaminated a natural spring, giving an entire small town dysentery.

The End.